Edward Owens

Edward Owens (1949–2010) was a queer African-American filmmaker, active within the New American Cinema of the 1960s. A native Chicagoan, he is best known for his experimental films Remembrance: A Portrait Study and Private Imaginings and Narrative Facts (1968–70). He ended his film career at the young age of 20, when his self-proclaimed drug addiction and undiagnosed bipolar disorder began to take their toll. The films that now survive from Owen's body of work are three experimental films that he made as an 18-year-old entering New York's underground film community. A fourth surviving title, Autre Fois J'ai Aime Une Femme (1966), was preserved through state-of-the-art 5K digital transfer, facilitated by MM Serra of The Film-Makers' Cooperative along with Owens' three other films.

Career

Style Owens' films can characterized by their painterly approach and personal feel. His films from 1966 to 1970 displayed growth within mastering a form. Originally inspired by Markopoulous' own style, Owens was able to create something within his own right. Owens' film are recognizable for their dramatic lighting and the use of superimposition and layering of images. His featurette Tomorrow's Promise (1967) tells a story of emptiness. Tomorrow's Promise (1967) Remembrance: A Portrait Study (1967) In 2006, Ronald Gregg included Owens' films into a screening series at the University of Chicago titled "Beyond Warhol, Smith, and Anger: Recovering the Significance of Postwar Queer Underground Cinema, 1950-1968". In 2009, the film programmer Ed Halter began working to spark the public's recognition of Edward Owen's work by rediscovering and redistributing his work as well as conducting personal interviews with Owens to better understand his creative vision. These digital transfers allowed for distribution and world-wide visibility of Owens' films through online Video on Demand programs.

In 2017, curators Mark Godfrey and Zoé Whitley included Owens' films in the exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, calling them "not only early examples of an experimental filmmaker turning to Black life for their subject, but an even rare case of a queer Black aesthetic on celluloid." Owens' films have also been screened at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago (2018), the LA Film Forum (2019), the Museum of Modern Art and the Maysles Documentary Center (2020).