farrah                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                rahaman
Dissertation Research
The Claudia Jones Project | Palimpsest
Selected Works, Writings, Exhibitions
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selected scholarly and cultural presentationsPanelist, “Alternative Forms of Knowledge Production: Multimodal Approaches to Black Feminist Epistemology”, American Studies Association, November 2024
Juror, Narrative Feature Award, New Orleans Film Festival, October 2024
Panel Facilitator + Curator, Critical Fabulation, BlackStar Film Festival, August 2023
Panel Facilitator + Curator, Black Queer Futures, BlackStar Film Festival, August 2023
Panel Facilitator + Curator, Disability Justice, BlackStar Film Festival, August 2023
Black Fire Film Program Curator and Panel Moderator, Express Newark Things We Do In the Dark Curator Symposium, June 2023
Conversation with Louis Massiah and Farrah Rahaman, Toni Cade Bambara Work in Progress Film, William and Louise Greaves Filmmakers’ Seminar, hosted by BlackStar Projects, March 2023
Conversation with Haile Gerima and Farrah Rahaman, William and Louise Greaves Filmmakers’ Seminar, hosted by BlackStar Projects, March 2022
Panel Moderator, “The Role of Black Journalism in the Struggle for Freedom” hosted by The Claudia Jones School with Carol Boyce Davies, February 2022
Roundtable, “A People's Art is the Genesis of Their Freedom: The Claudia Jones Project” hosted by the Center for Media at Risk with Che R. Applewhaite, Ra Malika Imhotep, Deborah A. Thomas, October 2021
Presentation on the Claudia Jones Project at The John B. Moore Documentary Studies Collaborative at Skidmore College, October 2021
Panel Facilitator + Curator, “Glitch and the Moving Image” with Legacy Russell Cameron A. Granger, E. Jane and Jazmin Jones and Imran Siddiquee, BlackStar Film Festival, August 2021
Panel Facilitator + Curator, “Nuotama Bodomo and Fox Maxy in Conversation With Tina Campt”, BlackStar Film Festival, August 2021
Moderator, Movement at the Margins Film Discussion: Steve McQueen’s Lover’s Rock with Maori Holmes and d. Sabela Grimes, at the Center for Media at Risk, April 2021
Panel Facilitator + Curator, “Intimate Histories: Archival Approaches in Time” with Garrett Bradley, Patrisse Cullors, Saidiya Hartman, Imani Perry and Maori Karmael Holmes, BlackStar Film Festival, August 2020
Panel Facilitator + Curator, “Solidarity Is Not A Trend, Nor a Market Exchange” with Marcia Smith, Bhawin Suchak, Jemma Desai, Ben-Alex Dupris and Sonya Childress, BlackStar Film Festival, 2020
Panel Facilitator + Curator, “Mothering and Laboring the Cinematic Revolution” with Loira Limbal, Natasha K Ngaiza, A-lan Holt, Roni Nicole Henderson-Day and Dani McClain, BlackStar Film Festival, 2020
Moderator, “Chronicles” and “The Grind” Shorts Programs, BlackStar Film Festival, 2020
Emcee, “Street Movies,” Scribe Video Center, 2019-2020
Juror, The Southern Documentary Fund Research and Development Grant, 2020
Juror, The Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grant Fall and Spring Cycles, 2019-2020
Juror, The Philadelphia Foundation Forman Fund for Teaching Artists, 2018
Producer, The Leeway Foundation “Changemakers Cabaret,” 2018
Moderator, BlackStar Film Festival, “Not in My Neighbourhood” Q&A with Kurt Orderson, 2018
Moderator, Screening Scholarship and Media Festival, “Creative Insurgence: Undergraduate Multimodality and Beyond,” 2019
Juror, Bread & Roses Foundation Giving Project: Race and Economic Justice Fund, 2018
Panelist, Visual Research for Social Change, Teacher’s College at Columbia University, “Pursuing Social Justice Through Multimodality,”2018
“They Tried to Bury Us,” On Land and Justice, The Galleries At Moore College Of Art & Design, 2018
Panelist, “Youth Media and Activism,” Temple University, 2018
Panelist, Ethnography in Education Research Forum at The University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, 2018
Moderator, “What Does It Mean to Be Caribbean” Artist Talk, “Expanded Caribbean” Exhibit, Leonard Pearlstein Gallery, 2017
Panelist + Scribe, Screening Scholarship Media Festival at The University of Pennsylvania, 2017
Panelist, “Student Conference on Global Challenges: Crossing Borders,” Drexel University, 2017
“They Tried to Bury Us” Storyville Screening And Q&A, Scribe Video Center, November 2017
“They Tried to Bury Us” Screening And Q&A, Slought Foundation, March 2017
“They Tried to Bury Us” Broadcasted On PhillyCAM August-September 2017
“They Tried to Bury Us” Vietlead Resilient Roots Farm, 2017
Panelist, “Oral History Methods,” Student Conference on Global Challenges: Sustainability, Drexel University, 2016
Discussant, BlackStar Film Festival, “Diasporic Trilogia” Q&A with Blitz the Ambassador, August 2016
Moderator, BlackStar Film Festival, “Dreamstates” Q&A with Saul Williams, August 2016
Panelist, “CAMRA Fellows Workshop”, Screening Scholarship Media Festival, 2016

selected worksWriter + Producer, BlackStar Land Acknowledgment, 2023.
Producer, Many Lumens Podcast, 2021-2022
Co-curator and Producer, “Witness” public art project in Philadelphia, 2021
Producer, “The Giving Project Documentary” Bread & Roses Foundation 
Podcast Producer, “What’s Left of Queer Theory”, Alice Paul Center at the University of Pennsylvania, 2019-2020
Director, “They Tried to Bury Us”, 2017
selected publicationsStudio Visit with Abigail Lucien, Seen Journal, 2023 (digital and print)
Swarm: An Oral History, Institute of Contemporary Art, 2023 (print)
Interview with Production Designer Nora Mendis, Seen Journal, 2021 (digital and print)
Why Philly? essay for the Common Field Convening, 2019  (print)
On Assemblage Gallery Guide Essay, Assemblage Exhibit, Leonard Pearlstein Gallery 2019 (digital and print)

teaching and mentoring experienceFilm Festival History and Practice, University of Pennsylvania, Spring 2022 with Maori Karmael Holmes
Police, Media and Popular Culture, University of Pennsylvania, Fall 2021 with Dr. Murali Balaji
Global Film Theory, University of Pennsylvania, Spring 2021 with Dr. Karen Redrobe and Dr. Meta Mazaj
Mentor to Undergraduate Students, CAMRA Mellon Mays Fellows program, 2019-2024
Mentor to Undergraduate Student, Women and Gender Studies, 2020-2022
Workshop Designer + Instructor, Scribe Video Center “Applying to Film Festivals 101,” 2021
Teaching Artist, VietLead, 2018-2019
curatorial projects

Producer, Venus Fly Trap, 2022-2025
BlackStar ProjectsVenus Flytrap is an outdoor performance series, short film, publication, and exhibition that centers Black and Indigenous narratives through ethnobotanical designs and movement. The series examines Philadelphia’s colonialist horticultural practices and the cultural significance of plants for Native and Black people of the Americas, especially the Caribbean.
Curator, Things We Do In The Dark, February-July 2023
Express Newark Things We Do in the Dark: Cinematic Experiments in Kinship showcases over twenty video-based works by Black and Indigenous artists who engage experimental, collaborative, and political approaches to contemporary filmmaking. The works were created “cinematic ensembles” by community-oriented artists, collectives, and groups that foreground practices of collective care and kinship. Often situated within community media and learning settings, these ensembles invoke poetry, music, and intergenerational storytelling as a creative practice that expands independent forms of cinema into collective imaginings of liberation and resistance.  
Curatorial Assistant, Terence Nance: Swarm, March-August 2023
Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of PennsylvaniaTerence Nance: Swarm is the first solo museum presentation dedicated to the artist’s genre-defying and innovative practice. The exhibition highlights the artist’s experimentation in film, video, television, sound and performance during the ten-year period spanning 2012 to 2022. The title of the exhibition, Swarm, is a tribute to the community of friends and family Nance built around him in Brooklyn in the early to mid-2000s.
Curatorial Assistant, Assemblage, Spring 2019
Leonard Pearlstein GalleryAssemblage is a group show featuring artists (Elissa Blount Moorhead, Arthur Jafa, Malik Sayeed, Abigail DeVille, Charlotte Brathwaite and others) who move in and out of disciplines, cities, and venues—defying categorization or genre. There is an interest in redefining authorship, genre and discipline, and moving away from a focus on outmoded (or at least contested) field structures including mastery, and genius towards shared practice and experimentation.

Curatorial Assistant, Lossless, Spring 2017
Leonard Pearlstein GalleryLossless is an exploration of Black and Brown bodies as a site of compression, considering the ways that labor, illusion, loss, lineage, and personhood are imagined and re-constructed. Chiefly featuring BlackStar alumni filmmakers (Razan AlSalah, Kevin Jerome Everson, ja’tovia gary, Roni Nicole Henderson, Kahlil Joseph, Terence Nance, Sosena Solomon) who have dismantled and reassembled conventions of cinema and video art to create new experiences with the moving image. Featured are works in installation, video, 16mm, online space, and 3-D environments
Producer, The Agitators, July-August 2016
International House of PhiladelphiaWhen developing a black and white photo negative, the undeveloped film must be submerged into an airtight bath of chemicals and rotated at regularly-timed intervals. This process is called agitation, and it is critical in film development. The Agitators is a photo exhibit that celebrates five years of BlackStar with 15 portraits of filmmakers, scholars, and cultural workers whose creative work and support have contributed to shaping the festival.