Jyoti Mistry
Professor
The Film, Photography and Literary Composition UnitProfessor
The Film, Photography and Literary Composition UnitAbout Jyoti Mistry
Jyoti Mistry is Professor in FILM and works in film both as a research form and as a mode of artistic practice. She has made critically acclaimed films in multiple genres and her installation work draws from cinematic traditions but is often re-contextualized for galleries and museums that are outside of the linear cinematic experience.
Select film works include: Cause of death (2020), When I grow up I want to be a black man (2017), Impunity (2014), 09: 21:25 (2011), Le Boeuf Sur Le Toit (2010), I mike what I like (2006) and We remember differently (2004). Her work has screened at numerous festivals including the Berlinale International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Kurzfilmtage in Winterthur, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Stockholm International Film Festival, Durban International Film Festival, Edinburgh Africa In Motion Festival, African Diaspora International Film Festival in New York City and Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris. Select publications include: we remember differently: Race, Memory, Imagination (2012) a collection of essays inspired by her film which explores the complexity of racial identity in South Africa. Gaze Regimes: Films and Feminisms in Africa (2015). Places to Play: practice, research, pedagogy (2017) explores the use of archive as an exemplar entry to rethink colonial images through “decolonised” film practices. She has co-edited a special issue of the Journal of African Cinema: “Film as Research Tool: Practice and Pedagogy” (2018).
Prior to receiving her PhD in Cinema Studies at New York University, she completed a Masters in Cinema Studies with a Certificate in Culture and Media. She also holds an MFA and an Honours degree in Comparative Literature from the University of the Witwatersrand.
She has taught at University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), New York University; University of Vienna; Arcada University of Applied Science Polytechnic in Helsinki, Nafti in Accra and Alle Arts School at University of Addis Ababa.
Mistry was in the Whitney Museum Independent Artist programme and has been artist in residence in New York City, at California College of Arts (San Francisco), Sacatar (Brazil) and a DAAD Researcher at Babelsberg Konrad Wolf Film University (Berlin). In 2016-2017 she was Artist in Residence at Netherlands Film Academy. In Fall 2020 she will undertake a research residency at the Sune Jonsson Centre for documentary photography at Västerbottens Museum.
In 2016 she was recipient of the Cilect (Association of International Film Schools) Teaching Award in recognition for innovation in practices in film research and pedagogy. She has supervised creative arts PhD’s to completion and currently supervises PhD candidates at HDK-Valand at University of the Gothenburg and the Wits School of Arts, University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. She is the principal research investigator on a BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) cross cultural research project that explores image-making practices.