C. A. Griffith
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Phone: 480-965-5337
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ASU @ Mesa City Center (MIX) - Room 345-L 50 N. Centennial Way Mesa, AZ 85201
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Mail code: 2002Campus: Tempe
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C. A. Griffith is an award-winning filmmaker with more than three decades of film production experience. Currently an Associate Professor of Film/Media Production, Griffith was recruited to ASU in 2006 to help build the newly launched film program (now the Sidney Poitier New American Film School) where she designed the original production, postproduction, cinematography and documentary courses. Currently, she teaches introductory to advanced fiction and non-fiction production courses. As director, Griffith’s credits include the award-winning documentary Mountains That Take Wing—Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama: A Conversation on Life, Struggles & Liberation, and her dramatic feature debut, Del Otro Lado (The Other Side), a Spanish language, gay male film that was shot on location in Mexico City.
Trained in New York’s independent film community, Griffith’s early credits include Juice starring Tupac Shakur, PBS documentaries such as A Litany For Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde (cinematographer), D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus' Branford Marsalis: The Music Tells You (camera operator) and Depeche Mode 101 (1st AC), Eyes on the Prize II, St. Clair Bourne’s Making ‘Do the Right Thing’ and music videos from Tracy Chapman's "Born to Fight" and Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" (Spike Lee) to The Rolling Stones' "Rock and a Hard Place" filmed during the Steel Wheels Tour in Boston.
In 2019, Griffith and H. L. T. Quan (ASU School of Social Transformation) were honored to have their co-directed/co-produced documentary, Mountains That Take Wing screen as one of eight films selected for Picture Lock: 30 Years of Film/Video Residencies at the Wexner Center for the Arts. In 2022, they were interviewed for the Feminist Freedom Warriors digital archive and Griffith was a Keynote Speaker at Istanbul Bilgi University's New Creative Praxix in Film and Television: Hybrid Futures of Gender Equality Conference.
Griffith’s publications appear in Filming Difference, Black Feminist Cultural Criticism, Black Women Film and Video Artists, The Wild Good, the journals Meridians, Signs and Calyx. Her screenplays have made the finals of the Sundance Screenwriters and Directors Labs, and won a top award from the Latino Screenplay Competition.
Griffith and Quan are co-founders of QUAD Productions, 501(c)3; they have co-directed, co-produced, and co-edited more than a dozen short and feature length, socially relevant documentaries including three films completed during postproduction residency awards at Wexner Center for the Arts Film/Video Studio (“Art & Tech”) program: Mountains That Take Wing—Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama (2009—97 min, distributed by Women Make Movies), América’s Home (2014—Puerto Rico, 63 min) and Queer, Broke & Amazing! (2022—99 min). Find out more about Griffith's work on QUAD Productions website and YouTube Channel.
- M.F.A. University of California-Santa Barbara
- B.A. Stanford University
- Social, Enviromental and Economic Justice Themed Cinema, Fiction and Essays
- Documentary, Fictional and Mixed Genre Narratives
- Race, Class, Gender and Culture
- Independent and Foreign Cinema
- African-American, Latinx and LGBTQ+ Cinema
- Women of Color as Cultural Producers
- Documentary and Urban/Natural Landscape Photography
C. A. Griffith and H. L. T. Quan's award-winning film, Mountains That Take Wing, covers over 100 years of social movement history and the ways ordinary people have done extraordinary things in the face of extreme hatred and injustice. For nearly a decade, it headlined the Women Make Movies special collection, EXTRAORDINARY AMERICAN WOMEN, ORDINARY LIVES and continues to be featured at film screenings and events around the globe.
Mountains That Take Wing (2009, 97 minutes). Thirteen years, two radical activist all-stars-one conversation. Internationally renowned scholar, professor and writer Angela Davis and 89-year-old grassroots organizer and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Yuri Kochiyama spent over a decade conversing intimately about personal histories and influences that shaped them and their overlapping experiences. Mountains That Take Wing offers the gift of these two remarkable women’s lives, sharing the pair’s recorded exchanges in 1996 and 2008. The film’s unique format honors the scope and depth of their knowledge on topics ranging from Jim Crow laws and Japanese American internment camps, to Civil Rights, anti-war, women’s and gay liberation movements, to today’s campaigns for political prisoners and prison reform. Intercut with compelling period footage, Davis and Kochiyama’s cogent observations, keen analyses, and steadfast resolve to create a more equitable, humane world offer inspiring lessons in empowerment and community building for current and future generations.
América's Home (2014, 63 minutes). Before Hurricane Maria lacerated Puerto Rico, América “Meca” Sorrentini-Blaut, a septuagenarian on fixed income, struggled to transform her family’s home into Casa Sofia, a cultural center named after her mother. When developers offered Meca $2-million dollars to knock down Casa Sofia, she turned them down. Meca, her contemporaries and young people in a dozen communities across rapidly gentrifying San Juan fought, and sometimes won, to save their homes and neighborhoods from being bulldozed and disappeared by condo and hotel developers. América’s Home is an enchanting panorama of the transformative power of the cultural arts, community and belonging. It is a testament to the resilience of the Puerto Rican people on the island and in Chicago.
Bad Form: Queer, Broke & Amazing! (2022, 99 minutes) is a genre busting exploration of the struggles and triumphs of low income LGBTQ+ people and their communities in the U.S. The documentary refreshingly challenges the myth of gay affluence to reveal an extraordinary world of over 80 broke, but not broken LGBTQ+ people surviving, thriving, and trying to everyone free…from the Deep South to the Southwest, to queer coastal meccas and points in-between.
Courses
2025 Spring
Course Number | Course Title |
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THF 497 | Senior Project |
FMP 499 | Individualized Instruction |
FMP 300 | Short Film Production |
FMP 499 | Individualized Instruction |
THF 497 | Senior Project |
FMP 360 | The Filmmaker's Voice |
2024 Fall
Course Number | Course Title |
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FMP 480 | Film Lab I: Production |
FMP 480 | Film Lab I: Production |
FMP 499 | Individualized Instruction |
FMP 350 | Directing Documentary Media |
FMP 499 | Individualized Instruction |
THF 497 | Senior Project |
THF 497 | Senior Project |
2024 Spring
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
THF 497 | Senior Project |
FMP 499 | Individualized Instruction |
FMP 300 | Short Film Production |
FMP 499 | Individualized Instruction |
THF 497 | Senior Project |
FMP 360 | The Filmmaker's Voice |
2023 Fall
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
FMP 300 | Short Film Production |
THF 497 | Senior Project |
FMP 499 | Individualized Instruction |
FMP 350 | Directing Documentary Media |
FMP 499 | Individualized Instruction |
THF 497 | Senior Project |
2023 Spring
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
THF 497 | Senior Project |
FMP 499 | Individualized Instruction |
FMP 350 | Directing Documentary Media |
FMP 499 | Individualized Instruction |
THF 497 | Senior Project |
FMP 400 | Advanced Short Film Production |
FMP 350 | Directing Documentary Media |
2022 Fall
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
FMP 300 | Short Film Production |
THF 497 | Senior Project |
FMP 499 | Individualized Instruction |
FMP 350 | Directing Documentary Media |
FMP 499 | Individualized Instruction |
THF 497 | Senior Project |
2022 Spring
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
THF 497 | Senior Project |
FMP 499 | Individualized Instruction |
FMP 350 | Directing Documentary Media |
FMP 499 | Individualized Instruction |
THF 497 | Senior Project |
2021 Spring
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
FMP 499 | Individualized Instruction |
THF 497 | Senior Project |
THF 497 | Senior Project |
FMP 300 | Focus on Film |
FMP 350 | Directing Documentary Media |
FMP 499 | Individualized Instruction |
2020 Fall
Course Number | Course Title |
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FMP 394 | Special Topics |
2020 Spring
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
FMP 499 | Individualized Instruction |
THF 497 | Senior Project |
THF 497 | Senior Project |
FMP 300 | Focus on Film |
FMP 394 | Special Topics |
2019 Fall
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
FMP 499 | Individualized Instruction |
FMP 499 | Individualized Instruction |
THF 497 | Senior Project |
THF 497 | Senior Project |
FMP 300 | Focus on Film |
FMP 394 | Special Topics |