C

urrent Projects

The Curious Adventures of William Monroe Trotter

Woodrow Wilson was the most prominent intellectual of the white supremacist culture war waged against equal rights for Afro-Americans. Wilson propagated a falsified history of the Civil War and Reconstruction. He also glorified the Ku Klux Klan as the legitimate ruler of the South. As President, Wilson reshaped the federal government to reflect the general will of the Southern whites to dominate Afro-Americans and unleashed a state propaganda machine to change public opinion in the North that hitherto rejected white supremacy.

On the presidential campaign trail, Wilson made the promise to William Monroe Trotter, founder of the Equal Rights League, that, as President, he would uphold the law that granted equal rights to Afro-American citizens. Trotter then organized the black vote for Wilson, despite the latter being the candidate of the Democratic Party. Trotter first went to the White House in 1913 to remind the president of his promise of equality and freedom for Afro-Americans. Wilson made yet another empty promise to look into the complaint about segregation of the federal government, pretending that he had no knowledge of it.

Our first short film is a reenactment of the third meeting between Trotter and Wilson, as documented by official White House transcripts. Trotter this time sets a mousetrap for Wilson and actually catches the conscience of the king.

Our research-filmmaking method, in which artistic imagination is guided by disciplined scholarship, is best suited for the exploration of the cunningly covered-up, under-documented, falsified and disremembered history of the American people. In addition, the cinematic reenactment of Trotter’s successful outing of Wilson as the political force behind the legalization of segregation could be cathartic if screened on the Princeton campus.

awarded by grant from Princeton Histories Fund

2020, current, Hidden History of Hollywood, Production book

Angelus Novus: Before Dawn

TIME, SPACE, EXISTENCE EXHIBITION 2023
Palazzo Mora, Venice, Italy

ANGELUS NOVUS - Études for Cupola in Instinct and Algorithm

Inspired by Klee’s iconic angel of innovation and Brunelleschi’s legendary dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore, the Form Finding Lab and the UCHV Research Film Studio of Princeton University together with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill will present an installation of a study on cupola-assembly with a projected cinematic fresco designed to assist sensory learning about architectonic invention.

Quantum-Cinematic Storytelling via 360-degree Filmmaking

Our research film communicates concepts of quantum physics perspicuously and persuasively not only between experts but also from experts to the public. The innovative virtual reality filmmaking will use cinematic storytelling based upon architectonic-geometrical as opposed to verbal-conceptual thinking. Our architectonic dramaturgy is drawn from the dramatic staging of scientific demonstrations, experiments and dramatic animation of digital simulations of quantum phenomena.

Home Beyond Good and Evil

A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.
Walter Benjamin, Thesis on the History of Philosophy

A Local Spirit - Research Film Studio Production.
Erika Kiss, Sigrid Adriaenssen, Chris Tully, John Higgins,

Grant from The New Institute, Hamburg

Prince’ Noir

Prince’ Noir, or, Tales from the Campus is a short film based on three actual events that took place on the Princeton campus involving black students during the time when Woodrow Wilson (then known as Tommy) was an undergraduate. Two of these stories can be found in the ‘Princeton Slavery Project‘ website and one in Barksdale Maynard’s Wilson biography. The film will retell these tales from pluralistic points of view creating suspense and some confusion. One of the stories, however, positively uplifting. When five Southern students presented James McCosh with the ultimatum that either they leave Princeton or he expels his black student from his psychology class, President McCosh answered that “they would have to go, for under no circumstances would he exclude the Negro from his class so long as he wanted to attend.” Prince’ Noir is a campus film – nothing can prevent us starting production in the fall. We have several award-winning directors lined up to advise us on Zoom.

2021 Spring, current, Hidden History of Hollywood, Production book

Trinity

This story follows the tumultuous relationship between Betty, a young Sunday schoolteacher, and Keith, a black Princeton student, as Princeton (both the town and university) go through a transitional period during the civil rights era. The onset of racial violence and recent assasination of John F. Kennedy dampens the excitement for the spring ‘68 commencement as the black townspeople and students grapple with these troubling times and Princeton University attempts to soothe the tension.
The next year ushers in a new era for the campus as female students are officially now admitted to the university. Yet, even with this progress, only ten black students have gained admission and still have to endure the ongoing racial pressures. Keith, a newly admitted student, instantly feels an overwhelming sense of hatred for the campus and finds refuge at the Trinity Church. Here, he forms a relationship with Betty who teaches him the hidden history of Princeton and its racist past. As their relationship progresses, Keith is inspired to become a revolutionary and join the many protests on campus against the Vietnam war, African Aparteid, and internal campus problems. His engagement with these issues comes with significant risks.
During all of this, the sanctuary of Princeton’s Trinity Church is threatened with racist demonstrations. Keith's future at the university is also often put under question because of his demonstrations which tests his relationship with Betty. Betty eventually realizes the gravity of the situation as she witnesses the radicalization of Keith. She leaves for New York to become a teacher and Keitch graduates and moves to California to become a Black Panther.

Frelicia Tucker, Taylor Branch, a Research Film Studio project (Hidden History of Hollywood, 2021 Spring)

2021 Spring, current, Production book, Student project

ICEVOICE

In this short film we're following a molecule of air (carbon dioxide) as it is transported around the world 3 million years ago, before it ends up in Antarctica and gets trapped between snowflakes and buried. This molecule of air is buried under kilometers of ice until today, when this air being drilled out in an ice core by scientists as a window into what the Earth was like 3 million years ago.

A Local Spirit-Research Film Studio production (John Higgins, Erika Kiss, Sigrid Adriaenssen, Chris Tully)

Video

Timefarer

A Virtual Reality (VR) rendering of Kubrick's time-travel sequence from his "2001: A Space Odyssey”.  Kubrick’s epic film gave us the first image of Planet Earth from an out of space perspective – a whole year before the analogue photo from Apollo 11 – showing that art can train imagination to advance knowledge by priming our cognition to take in the unexpected and unfamiliar that science discovers, and technology delivers. This is also the first film to give us a representation of Einstein’s theory of relativity: a very inspiring (some say psychedelic) sequence of time-travel that takes us back to the beginning of the universe.  We will project the circa 10-minute sequence into a full-dome screen and record it with the 360-degree camera available in PU's Studio Lab. The VR film will be able to be viewed via headsets and can be used for educational purposes. We hope to learn the ropes of immersive filmmaking and maybe even reinvent the technology while figuring it out from scratch. The VR rendering of the time-travel sequence is an opportunity to extend beyond the limitations of the original film.  Our short research film will be an ideal starting point for conveying a sense of the notion of a space without a sense of time and other complex ideas about the fundamental physics of the universe as well as the Big Bang.

A Local Spirit - Research Film Studio Production (Erika Kiss, Chris Tully, Sigrid Adriaenssens, John Higgins)

Awarded by the David A. Gardner ’69 Magic Grant

Virtual Reality

Astrophysics Senior Thesis

Senior Thesis research film in astrophysics by Jiangying Gao
Advisors: Jo Dunkley and Erika Kiss

The Non-Human Perspective

Class Interview with Lynette Wallworth
Spring 2022 Environmental Film Studies

Crip Camp – class interview

Class interview with the directors (Cinema in the Times of Pandemic, 2021 Spring).

2021 Spring, Cinema in the Times of Pandemic, Interview, Student project, Video

What goes into BlackFace (video)

Frelicia Tucker, a Research Film Studio project (Hidden History of Hollywood, 2021 Spring)

2021 Spring, Hidden History of Hollywood, Student project, Video

Afro-American Homecoming

Samantha L. Johnson, a Research Film Studio project (Cinema in the Times of Pandemic, 2021 Spring)

2021 Spring, Cinema in the Times of Pandemic, Student project, Video

The Soul of a Nation

Frelicia Tucker, Taylor Branch, a Research Film Studio project (Hidden History of Hollywood, 2021 Spring)

2021 Spring, Hidden History of Hollywood, Student project, Video

Democratizing Film – with John Nein and Carlo Chatrian

Jemima O. Williams, a Research Film Studio project (Cinema in the Times of Pandemic, 2021 Spring)

2021 Spring, Cinema in the Times of Pandemic, Interview, Student project, Video

Class Interview with Agnieszka Holland

Aishah O. Balogun, a Research Film Studio project (Cinema in the Times of Pandemic, 2021 Spring)

2021 Spring, Cinema in the Times of Pandemic, Interview, Student project