CARROLL PARROTT BLUE

Artist Biography

Carroll Parrott Blue is a documentary filmmaker and a Professor at San Diego State University. Her films and videos include SDSU Television, Film and New Media Program: A Promotional Video, Journeys Through the Bloodline; The Fern Street Circus; Mystery of the Senses: Vision; Nigerian Arts – Kindred Spirits; Conversations with Roy DeCarava; Varnette’s World: A Study of a Young Artist; and Two Women. She has also worked as a Field Producer on the late Marlon Riggs' production, Black Is…Black Ain’t; a Segment Producer on Eyes on the Prize: Series II; and a production assistant for Jane Fonda's IPC FILMS on the feature films Nine to Five; On Golden Pond; Rollover; and the ABC-TV movie of the week, The Dollmaker.

Currently she is on the Education Committee of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, a board member for the Media Arts Center San Diego, an advisor to the Howard University Film and Television Program and the San Diego Jewish Film Festival. She was a Board Member with The Association for Independent Film and Videomakers (AIVF); The San Diego Fern Street Circus; Trustee for The International Film Seminars; a Board Member and the Media Chair for The California Council for the Humanities; an Advisory Panelist for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Program Fund and the California Arts Council. Additional honors include the Institute for Medical Humanities Visiting Scholar Award at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, a Harry Ransom Library Research Fellow at the University of Texas in Austin, a grant from the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities; a faculty seminar invitation from the Folger Institute; a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship and participation in the Coro Leadership Training Program. For the past two years, she has developed a Television, Film and New Media Program Advancement Program that has netted $190,000 in foundation and individual donor funds including corporate equipment donations.

Her undergraduate work was in English Literature (BA, 1960) at Boston University and her graduate work was in Motion Picture Production (M.F.A., 1980) at the University of California, Los Angeles and The American Film Institute (Producing Fellow, 1982).

In March 2001, she curated a standing-room-only Cuban Film retrospective for the San Diego Latino Film Festival, featuring a guest appearance by Cuban filmmaker Gerardo Chijona. She initiated and co-organized a thirty-year retrospective of the work of Walter Murch, a triple Academy Award Winning Sound Designer and Editor (A Tribute to Walter Murch at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, October 6, 11, 18, 2000). She has organized film series for The American Film Institute, the San Diego Museum of Art, The Museum of Photographic Arts, the Malcolm X Public Library and The Hawaii International Film Festival. The University of Texas Press will publish her book, The Dawn At My Back: A Memoir of a Black Texas Upbringing. A CD-ROM adaptation of this book will be published by the Labyrinth Project located at the Annenberg Center for Communication in the University of Southern California. Both are due in 2003. Her other writings appear in "SAGE: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women"; "Black Film Review"; "The Independent"; and the book, Life Notes: Personal Writings by Contemporary Black Women (editor, Patricia Bell Scott, New York: W.W. Norton, 1994).

Writings on and examples of her work are in the following books: Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present by Deborah Willis-Kennedy, W. W. Norton, 2000; Struggles for Representation: Black Documentary Film and Video Makers by Janet Cutler and Phyllis Klotman for Indiana University Press, 1999; Feminism and Documentary edited by Diane Waldman and Janet Walker for University of Minnesota Press, 1999; not just race, not just gender: Black Feminist Readings by Valerie Smith for Routledge Press, 1998; and Black Women Film and Video Makers edited by Jacqueline Bobo for Routledge Press, 1998.

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