Travis Wilkerson

Profile

Travis Wilkerson’s internationally recognized body of filmmaking crosses boundaries with documentary and fiction, performance, and activism. At the epicenter of his work is the ongoing search for meeting points of aesthetic eloquence and political engagement, produced with an absolute modesty of material resources, as self-sufficiently as possible. In 2015, Sight & Sound called Wilkerson “the political conscience of American cinema.”

His films have screened at hundreds of venues and festivals worldwide, including Sundance, Toronto, Locarno, Rotterdam, Vienna, Yamagata, the FID Marseille, and the Musée du Louvre. The NY Times called his most recent film, DID YOU WONDER WHO FIRED THE GUN?, “an urgent, often corrosive look at America’s past and present through the prism of family, patriarchy, white supremacy, and black resistance.” In 2020, The New Yorker called it one of the “Sixty-Two Films That Shaped the Art of Documentary Filmmaking.” His essay film on the lynching of Wobbly Frank Little, AN INJURY TO ONE, was named one of the best avant-garde films of the decade by Film Comment and a “political-cinema landmark” by the LA Times. His work with Erin Wilkerson in Creative Agitation was included in the Venice Biennale.

His writings on film have appeared in Cineaste, Kino!, and Senses of Cinema. He has taught filmmaking at the University of Colorado, CalArts, Pomona College, and Vassar. Presently, he teaches Film Directing at LaSalle College of the Arts, Singapore. He is also the founding editor of Now: A Journal of Urgent Praxis.