Screening: Shut Up and Paint

Shut Up and Paint (20 minutes, 2022) is an award-winning documentary short about the painter Titus Kaphar as he looks to film as a medium in the face of an insatiable art market seeking to silence his activism.

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Called “a fascinatingly layered piece…unusually occupied by questions of process and power,” Shut Up and Paint was recently recognized as one of 15 films to advance in the Documentary Short Film category for the 95th Academy Awards.

A free virtual screening will follow a pre-recorded conversation with Asma Naeem, BMA Interim Co-Director and Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Chief Curator. They will discuss what led Kaphar to make the documentary, the relationship between his paintings and film, and how the documentary unpacks the challenges that Black artists face in today’s art world and market.

Naeem co-curated UnSeen: Our Past in a New Light, Ken Gonzales-Day and Titus Kaphar at the National Portrait Gallery in 2018. Shut Up and Paint received the Grand Jury Prize at both the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and Independent Film Festival Boston and was also selected for DOC NYC’s “Shortlist: Shorts” and is a Cinema Eye Honors nominee for Outstanding Nonfiction Short. A co-production of DCTV and Revolution Ready, Shut Up and Paint is directed by Titus Kaphar and Alex Mallis, produced by Chloe Gbai, and executive produced by Matthew O’Neill and Perri Peltz.