The first U.S. retrospective to explore Skip Norman’s multifaceted, international career

American filmmaker, cinematographer, photographer, visual anthropologist, and educator Skip Norman (aka Wilbert Reuben Norman Jr.) was born in Baltimore. In 1966—following five years in Germany and Denmark, where he developed an interest in acting and directing alongside his studies dedicated to the German language and literature—he was accepted into the inaugural cohort of students at Berlin’s DFFB Film School. While there he befriended and worked alongside a group of artists and activists interested in the revolutionary potential of film, including Harun Farocki, Holger Meins, Helke Sander, and Gerd Conradt.

In addition to collaborating as cinematographer and assistant director on several of his classmates’ works, Norman authored a remarkable but little-seen body of documentary, experimental, and essay films in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Building upon and contributing to the incendiary work of his peers decrying the US war in Vietnam, he produced a number of equally urgent films about his experience as a Black man in both West Germany and in his home country. Upon his subsequent return to the United States, he continued to collaborate with notable filmmakers like Haile Gerima while further pursuing his interest in photography, both as an artistic practice and as the subject of his doctoral studies, before eventually teaching the craft in Cyprus.

While there have been selected presentations of Norman’s films in Germany in recent years, his work remains less known abroad. Featuring premieres of new restorations and newly produced subtitles, “Skip Norman: Here and There” is the first U.S. retrospective to explore Norman’s multifaceted, international career, bringing his practice as a filmmaker in dialogue with his work as a cinematographer and bridging his time on both sides of the Atlantic.

“Skip Norman: Here and There” has been guest-curated by Jesse Cumming and is presented by the German Film Office and Anthology Film Archives.

PROGRAM 1: THE DFFB YEARS
Ingrid Opperman, Skip Norman, West-Berlin, ca. 1969-70 (ca. 1969-70, 1 min.)
Skip Norman, Cultural Nationalism (1969, 11 min.)
Skip Norman, Strange Fruit (1969, 29 min.)
Skip Norman, Riffi (1966, 16 min.)
Skip Norman, Blues People (1969, 18 min.)

PROGRAM 2: BERLIN-HARLEM
Lothar Lambert & Wolfram Zobus, 1 Berlin-Harlem (1974, 100 min.) [Directors of Photography: Skip Norman & Reza Dabui]

PROGRAM 3: COLLABORATIONS
Helke Sander, Subjectitude / Subjektitüde (1966, 4 min.) [Assistant Director of Photography: Skip Norman]
Helke Sander, Silvo (1967, 11 min.) [Assistant Director of Photography: Skip Norman]
Harun Farocki, White Christmas (1968, 3 min.) [Director of Photography: Skip Norman]
Harun Farocki, Their Newspapers / Ihre Zeitungen (1968, 17 min.) [Director of Photography: Skip Norman]
Thomas Giefer & Hans-Rüdiger Minow, Berlin – 2. Juni 67 (1967, 45 min.) [Director of Photography: Skip Norman]

PROGRAM 4: PERFORMANCES
Allan Kaprow, Warm-ups (1975, 14 min.) [Director of Photography: Skip Norman]
Mirra Bank, Spirit to Spirit: Nikki Giovanni (1986, 29 min.) [Director of Photography: Skip Norman]

PROGRAM 5: THE INDEPENDENT YEARS
Skip Norman, On Africa (1970, 35 min.)
Skip Norman, Washington D.C. November 1970 (1970, 18 min.)
Skip Norman, Black Man’s Volunteer Army of Liberation (1970, 43 min.)

PROGRAM 6: WILMINGTON 10—U.S.A. 10,000
Haile Gerima, Wilmington 10—U.S.A. 10,000 (1979, 120 min.) [Director of Photography: Skip Norman]

A selection of Skip Normans newly restored films will be presented at The Museum of Modern Art on January 18 as part of “To Save and Project: The 20th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation”.

On January 20, the German Film Office will host a mini-symposium entitled “Skip Norman in Relation”, organized and presented by Greg de Cuir Jr, the co-founder and artistic director of the Belgrade-based Kinopravda Institute. Select screenings of Norman’s films will be complemented by talks from a panel of experts dealing with key themes that connect Norman’s work with a wider aesthetic and cultural context.