Sophia Nahli
Allison
Experimental Documentary FilmmakerLos Angeles, CA and Durham, NC
2020 USA Fellow
This award was generously supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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Sophia Nahli Allison is an experimental documentary filmmaker, photographer, and dreamer from Los Angeles. Allison disrupts conventional documentary methods by reimagining the archives and excavating hidden truths. She conjures ancestral memories to explore the intersection of fiction and non-fiction storytelling. She has held residencies and fellowships at The MacDowell Colony, as a 3Arts Fellow at The Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY, and POV Spark’s African Interactive Art Residency. She has received film grants from Glassbreaker Films and the Sundance Institute New Frontier Lab Programs. Her short film A Love Song For Latasha received a 2019 IDA nomination for Best Short and the Jury Award for Best Documentary Short at the 2019 AFI Fest, The New Orleans Film Festival, BlackStar Film Festival and more including a world premiere at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival and a 2020 screening at the Sundance Film Festival. Past projects have been featured in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, with Los Angeles Filmforum at MOCA, and more. She was named the 2017 Student Video Photographer of the year by The White House News Photographers Association and is a 2014 recipient of a Chicago 3Arts Award, a $25,000 grant for her work as a teaching artist. In 2018 she was a co-facilitator for the track Magic As Resistance at the Allied Media Conference. Allison received her master’s degree from UNC and is currently living and working between her hometown of Los Angeles and Durham, NC.
Portrait photo by Janice Duncan.
1839-Present: Self Documentation. Self portrait from the ongoing project Dreaming Gave Us Wings.
Rebirth. Self portrait from the ongoing project Dreaming Gave Us Wings.
The Rapture. Self portrait from the ongoing project Dreaming Gave Us Wings.