RaMell Ross | |
|---|---|
 Ross at the 2018 Montclair Film Festival. | |
| Born | 1982 (age 41–42) |
| Education | |
| Occupation(s) | Film director, photographer, professor |
RaMell Ross is an American filmmaker, photographer, academic, and writer best known for his 2018 documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening . [1]
Ross was born in Frankfurt, Germany and raised in Fairfax, Virginia, where he attended Lake Braddock Secondary School. [2] [3]
In 2005, Ross graduated from Georgetown University, where he majored in English and sociology and played on the Georgetown Hoyas men's basketball team. [1] [3] He later earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design. [3]
In 2009, Ross moved to Greensboro, Alabama for a position as a basketball coach and photography teacher. [4] These experiences inspired multiple collections of photographs and art installments inspired by Black life in the American South. [5]
Filmmaker Magazine named Ross among "25 New Faces of Independent Film" in 2015. That year, he was a Sundance Institute New Frontier Artist in Residence at the MIT Media Lab. [6] He joined faculty of the Brown Arts Initiative at Brown University in 2016, where he currently serves as an assistant professor of visual art. [7] Soon after, he was awarded a two-year Mellon Gateway Fellowship. [8]
Ross' directorial debut, Hale County This Morning, This Evening , an experimental documentary about Black life in Hale County, Alabama, premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. [9] He was awarded the Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at the festival. The film went on to win a Peabody Award and in 2019 was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and the Primetime Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking. [10]
Easter Snap, Ross' documentary short depicting five men preparing a hog to be butchered in a ritualistic fashion, debuted at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. [11] [1]
The Ogden Museum of Southern Art presented a retrospective of Ross' artwork, titled Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body: The Work of RaMell Ross from October 2021 to March 2022. A book of Ross' work titled Spell Time, Practice, American, Body was released in 2023. [5]
Nickel Boys , Ross' film adaptation of the Colson Whitehead novel The Nickel Boys , debuted at the Telluride Film Festival on August 30, 2024. [12] The film is scheduled to open the 2024 New York Film Festival. [13]
| Year | Title | Notes | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Hale County This Morning, This Evening | — | [1] |
| 2019 | Easter Snap | Documentary short | [11] |
| 2024 | Nickel Boys | — | [13] |
| Year | Award | Category | Nominated work | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Sundance Film Festival | Special Jury Award for Creative Vision | Hale County This Morning, This Evening | Won | [1] |
| Gotham Awards | Best Documentary | Won [lower-alpha 1] | [9] | ||
| 2019 | Academy Awards | Best Documentary Feature Film | Nominated [lower-alpha 1] | [1] | |
| Primetime Emmy Awards | Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking | Nominated [lower-alpha 2] | [1] | ||
| Peabody Awards | Documentary Category | Won [lower-alpha 3] | [10] | ||
| Chicago International Film Festival | Best Documentary Short | Easter Snap | Won | [1] |
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