Career
Shortly after graduating from CalArts in 2008, Owusu was a featured artist [8] [9] of the 56th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar programmed by renowned critic and film curator Dennis Lim. [10] Named by Indiewire as one of the six Avant-Garde Female Filmmakers Who Redefined Cinema, and one of The Huffington Post's Black Artists: 30 Contemporary Art Makers Under 40 You Should Know, [11] Owusu was a 2013 MacDowell Colony Fellow [12] and a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow. [13]
In 2020, Owusu received the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists [14] bestowed by Film at Lincoln Center. [15]
Indiewire describes Owusu's shape-shifting film style:
Trafficking in the "complex contradictions" of blackness, displacement and memory, Owusu seamlessly transitions between experimental cinema, fine art and African tradition in order to create avant-garde films that question the nature of identity. [16]
Her "warring consciousness" as she describes it, becomes the point of departure for her film Me broni ba (my white baby). [17] Using hair as a medium of culture, she examines African and African-American identities and ideologies in an effort to resolve their differences. [18] Ed Halter, one of the founders of Light Industry in Brooklyn, listed Me Broni Ba as one of 2010's top ten films in Artforum magazine. [19]
She has produced award-winning films including Reluctantly Queer (2016) and Kwaku Ananse . In 2013, Kwaku Ananse [20] received a Golden Bear nomination at the Berlinale [21] and won the 2013 Africa Movie Academy Award [22] for the West African nation of Ghana in the Best Short Film category. The film, which starred Ghanaian artist Jojo Abot, was supported by Focus Features' Africa First, [23] and had its North American debut at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. [24] [25] [26] Kwaku Ananse was also included in the 2013 Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma - César Golden Nights, a program organized with support from UNESCO that selects notable short films.
Reluctantly Queer (2016) [27] produced in collaboration with Dr. Kwame Edwin Otu, [28] [29] an assistant professor of African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia [30] was nominated for the Golden Bear and Teddy Award [31] at the 2016 Berlin International Film Festival. [32] It had its North American premiere as part of the New Directors/New Films Festival. [33] [34] [35]
In 2017, Owusu [36] [37] [38] wrote and directed "On Monday of Last Week", [39] [40] [41] a film adaptation of a short story of the same name from celebrated author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's short story collection, "The Thing Around Your Neck." [42] [43] [44] The film which featured American actress Karyn Parsons best known for her role as Hilary Banks on the NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, secured a nomination at the 2017 African Movie Academy Awards. The film went on to screen at the Fowler Museum, [45] ICA London [46] and the 25th New York African Film Festival co-presented by Film at Lincoln Center. [47]
Owusu said in a 2015 interview with South Africa's Elle (magazine) , Owusu said "I began filming in Ghana as a way to find a place in my Ghanaian heritage. I often refer to myself as a Ghanaian-American, but I do consider myself to be an American filmmaker of Ghanaian descent. When I am in America, I feel very Ghanaian and when I'm in Ghana, I feel more American. I started traveling to Ghana with my friends from America to help me with the trauma of dealing with blackness both in Africa and in the African diaspora. My love for Africa was informed by romantic ideas about the continent as a home awaiting my arrival. Filming in Ghana, forms part of this journey." [48]
In 2014, Akosua Adoma Owusu was one of the Executive Producers for Afronauts a science fiction short film written and directed by young Ghanaian filmmaker Nuotama Bodomo. [49]
In 2013, Owusu was nominated for Tribeca Film Institute's Heineken Affinity Award's $20,000 prize. [50]
In 2013, Owusu's film Split Ends, I Feel Wonderful (2012) received the Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker at the 51st Ann Arbor Film Festival in Michigan. [51]
In 2011, Owusu participated as a member of the international jury at the Festival des trois continents in Nantes, France. [52]
In 2011, Owusu exhibited work in Cusp: Works on Film & Video by Kevin Jerome Everson & Akosua Adoma Owusu at the Luggage Store Gallery. Called the "intimate and the ideal realization of the vision of a valuable genius", [53] this show included Revealing Roots, a silent re-enactment of one of the most dramatic scenes from Alex Haley's Roots (1977 miniseries) combining found footage and scenes that star Owusu and other African actors. [54]
An anthology of Owusu's work has been granted to Grasshopper Film LLC. [55]
She is represented by Farber Law LLC.
Her films are produced under her production company Obibini Pictures LLC.
International accomplishments
In 2015, Two films directed and produced by Owusu were critics' picks in Artforum magazine. [69]
Owusu's film Reluctantly Queer was one of critics' best films of 2016 in Sight & Sound, a monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI) [70]
In 2016, Owusu was named by Britain's Royal African Society as their Human of the Week and by South Africa's Elle (magazine) as one of 50 incredible women. [71]
In 2017, she was named in Dazed magazine as one of ten experimental filmmakers tackling the world's big topics. [72]
In 2018, Owusu was commissioned by the Cobo Center to produce a video installation along Jefferson and Washington avenues in downtown Detroit, Michigan during Black History Month. [73]
Owusu was awarded an artist-in-residence by the Goethe-Institut Vila Sul in Salvador, Bahia Brazil, in 2018, along with celebrated British installation artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien. [74]
Owusu participated as a distinguished juror at the 57th annual Ann Arbor Film Festival and presented a special program dedicated to her body of work. [75]
In 2019, she led a workshop for filmmakers, critics and researchers on Triple Consciousness at Cinema Camp [76] an annual four-day long summer event organized by Meno Avilys Film Center based in Vilnius, Lithuania. [77]
Owusu's film White Afro [78] received the Premio Medien Patent Verwaltung AG prize in Pardi di domani (Leopards of Tomorrow) section of the 2019 Locarno Festival [79] [80] in Switzerland. The film was subtitled in three central European languages.
Owusu's film Pelourinho: They Don't Really Care About Us was one of critics' best films of 2019 in Sight & Sound magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). [81]
