Camille Billops
| Camille Billops | |
|---|---|
| Born |
12 August 1933 Los Angeles |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Los Angeles State College |
| Spouse(s) | James V. Hatch |
| Awards | Grand Jury Prize – Sundance Film Festival 1992 Finding Christa – director/writer/producer/herself |
Camille Billops (born 12 August 1933, Los Angeles) is an African American sculptor, filmmaker, archivist, and printmaker.
Billops was born in Los Angeles on 12 August 1933. Her parents, Alma Gilmore and Lucius Billops, worked "in service" for a Beverly Hills family, enabling them to provide her with a private secondary education at a Catholic school. She traces the beginning of her art to her parents' creativity in cooking and dressmaking.
Billops graduated in 1960 from Los Angeles State College, where she majored in education for physically handicapped children. She obtained her B.A. degree from California State University and her M.F.A. degree from City College of New York in 1975. In 1987, she married James Hatch, a playwright and theater producer.
Billops's primary visual art medium is sculpture and her works are in the permanent collections of the Jersey City Museum and the Museum of Drawers, Bern, Switzerland. Billops has exhibited in one-woman and group exhibitions worldwide including: Gallerie Akhenaton, Cairo, Egypt; Hamburg, Germany; Kaohsiung, Taiwan; Gimpel and Weitzenhoffer Gallery, and El Museo de Arte Moderno La Tertulia, Cali, Colombia. She was a long time friend and colleague of master printmaker Robert Blackburn, whom she assisted in establishing the first printmaking workshop in Asilah in 1978.
Although she began her career as a sculptor, ceramist, and painter, Billops is best known as a filmmaker of the black diaspora. In 1982, Billops began her filmmaking career with Suzanne, Suzanne. She followed this by directing five more films, including Finding Christa in 1991, a highly autobiographical work that garnered the Grand Jury Prize for documentaries at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival.Finding Christa has also been aired as part of the Public Broadcasting Service’s P.O.V. television series. Her other film credits include Older Women and Love in 1987, The KKK Boutique Ain’t Just Rednecks in 1994, Take Your Bags in 1998, and A String of Pearls in 2002. Billops produced all of her films with her husband and their film company, Mom and Pop Productions.
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