Fatimah Rony

Professor of Film and Media Studies

University of California, Irvine

Fatimah Tobing Rony is a writer, director, screenwriter and producer, and Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine, as well as Affiliated Researcher at the Institute of ACTE, University Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne (2022-2023). She holds a MFA in Directing/Film Production from UCLA and a Ph.D. in Art History from Yale University. Her short film “Annah the Javanese,” based on the life of painter Paul Gauguin’s model and servant by the same name, won fifteen awards at international festivals and premiered at the 2020 Annecy International Animated Film Festival. Her books include “How Do We Look? Resisting Visual Biopolitics” (Duke University Press, 2022), and “The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle”, winner of the Katherine S. Kovaks Award from the Society of Cinema Studies. She is currently in development with a feature animation film based on the life of Annah la Javanaise.