Ten Princeton undergraduates awarded Research Film Studio travel grants

Written by
Julie Clack
Oct. 9, 2024

Congratulations to the Princeton undergraduates who were awarded inaugural Research Film Studio travel grants. The recipients are seniors Han Lee and Olivia Williams; juniors Christofer Robles, Hannah Shin, Aishwarya Swamidurai, and Cailyn Tetteh; and sophomores Jatavion Butler, Skye Lowe, Matthew Okechukwu, and Yasmin Sokunle.

The grants will allow the students to travel to Venice, Italy, over fall break to see Research Film Studio’s “ArtHouse Memes” exhibition in the Palazzo Mora at the Venice Art Biennale, which builds on the success of an award-winning exhibition at the 2023 Architecture Biennale.

While in Venice, the students will also participate in UCHV’s Palazzo Talks & Workshops on the “Hidden American Arthouse Film Canon,” where they will discuss six films by Afro-American auteurs featured in “ArtHouse Memes.” The talks are co-organized by the European Cultural Center-Italy.

In addition to the Palazzo Talks, students will have an opportunity to explore Venice with guided tours of the Art Biennale’s national pavilions, the Palazzo Mora and Palazzo Bembo, the Pinault Collection, and the Guggenheim Museum.

Undergraduates interested in applying for future Research Film Studio travel grants should visit UCHV’s website for more information. 

About “ArtHouse Memes”

“ArtHouse Memes” grew out of a Research Film Studio course, “Hidden History of Hollywood,” which surveys a hidden canon of African American arthouse cinema. Using student coursework, the exhibition explores the co-productive powers of the art of filmmaking, architecture, and theater armed with cutting-edge applications of geometrical optics and sound engineering. The room, which is filled with technologically and artistically innovative film installations, reveals the immense potential of the art of cinema to inspire new forms of modern art that challenge our imagination and cognition through the senses.

Using some of the most memorable clips in Afro-American cinema, the exhibition introduces novel ways of articulating and dynamizing space by using a combination of immersive optics and directed sound as well as a hieroglyphic language of cinematic memes held together by the syntax of film montage. The exhibition also explores the tension and fusion between “masking” and “iconicity,” everyday life and ritual, TikTok aesthetics, and arthouse filmmaking.