RAMELL ROSS
ALCHEMIST | Filmmaker
The documentary filmmaker and artist set a new bar for literary adaptations—and narrative debuts—with his formally inventive and deeply felt Oscar nominated interpretation of Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys.
WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025? Hopefully—wishfully—a philanthropic grantor to support two culturally significant mixed-genre projects that will run $10 million total. The projects are unprecedented in every sense; their scale is something to behold. Who wants to fund something special?
WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? The two aforementioned projects. Their power produces a motion of the mind—they ask to be separated from the dream state. Don’t relegate me to the oneiric, we aren’t fantasy, they say, rousing the synapses.
ARE PEOPLE EVER STARSTRUCK BY YOU? Often. Very often, in fact, when I’m mistaken for other Black people. But it’s nice to be familiar enough to put one at ease. Someone looming at six foot six, backlit by history, and cast in infinite silhouette often produces a shock in the American stranger.
“Raking leaves with fervor. Being unable to swallow pills. Drinking V8s in lieu of eating the veggies. A high-pitched voice. ”
NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Medusa. The act of looking. That perception and lithification are not unrelated. A stare, a gaze, a glance. Slow energy. Slow matter. The photographic fixing of idea-things in our personal storms of consciousness.
WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? Wait, who is this other self asking this question? Does myself have a self? Who is this whisper of self?
WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? Raking leaves with fervor. Being unable to swallow pills. Drinking V8s in lieu of eating the veggies. A high-pitched voice.
in your life?
