With each project, the protean artist and filmmaker Christopher Harris challenges himself not only to re-think previously employed aesthetics but to discover new strategies and techniques that will serve to illuminate his complex and nuanced investigations. Working primarily in 16mm film, Harris manipulates celluloid, employs optical printing and altered film stock, and hand-cranks the motion picture camera, disrupting the images — and meaning — of the representation of Black people whether in the detritus of found footage or well-known works such as the early 20th century white supremacist film, Birth of a Nation.

Harris’ films have appeared at numerous festivals, museums and cinematheques including solo screenings at the 2024 Whitney Biennial, MoMA, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, the Locarno Film Festival, Arsenal Berlin, and a complete retrospective at Anthology Film Archives; a two-person screening with Su Friedrich at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris; and group screenings at the New York Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and the Vienna International Film Festival, among many others. His film, still/here (2000–1), is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Walker Art Center. 

Harris’ honors include a 2023 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts for Film/Video, a 2020–2021 fellowship at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and a 2015 Creative Capital award, among others. Harris is Professor of Visual Arts at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts and lives and works between Coralville, IA and Princeton, NJ.