Simone Barros
Visiting Instructor
Biography
Simone Barros creates films, plays, soundscapes and installations which breach the boundaries of solipsism to embark upon a symbiosis between the self and the other, between the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious to shatter these superficial binaries. In her filmmaking practice, distance and time become the material in the passing of temporal moments and traversal of spatial movements.
The 8th Floor by Shelley and Donald Rubin (2023), MONO XVI Cinematic Arts Festival (2022), Cosmic Rays Film Festival (2023), Cleveland International Film Festival (2019) and Chagrin Documentary Film Festival (2019) have screened Simone’s short experimental films. Third Coast International Audio Festival featured Simone’s soundscape in their 2020 Third Place Audio Festival Workshop and On Air Festival 2021 Official Selections included Simone’s audio drama. Cleveland Public Theatre produced Simone’s devised 10-minutes play, “Fail,” one act play, “The Forest Court,” staged a reading of her full length play, “Dating Godfrey,” and commissioned Simone to direct the short documentary film, “Station Hope: A Conversation.”
Simone has worked for the 68th Flaherty Film Seminar and for filmmakers Judith Helfand, Sam Pollard, Spike Lee and Charlie Kaufman. She delights in directing audiobooks including works by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Carolyn Forché, Hari Kunzu, Kate Folk, Ibram X. Kendi and Naomi Klein.
UnionDocs selected Simone as a fall 2023 Live/Work-in-Progress Resident. Arts Cleveland awarded Simone a 2016 Creative Workforce Fellowship and grant for the development of her short nonfiction film, “What Remains.”
Simone earned her MFA at Duke University where she served as a 2022 Duke Flaherty Fellow, a David and Elizabeth Roderick Scholar, received a Dean Research Award (2022 + 2023) and earned her BFA at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts receiving the Martin Scorsese Post-Production Grant, Dean Craft Award and 20th Century Fox Benjamin L. Hooks Scholarship. Later, NYU Tisch awarded Simone with a Tisch Alumni Microgrant for the production of her dramatic writing reading series.
Education
Duke University, MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts, College Teaching Certification, 2023
New York University BFA Tisch School of the Arts 1999 (advanced degree award; class of 2000)
Filmová a televizní fakulta Akademie múzických umění v Praze, Czech Republic, summer 1998
Emory University, College of Arts and Sciences, summer 1998
Publications and Projects
In Tandem Pt. II: The Planet Egg, short film, The 8th Floor Gallery, Sight/Geist: Reproducible Intimacy, 2023
Maybe I Is You, sound installation with moving image, Power Plant Gallery, In Relation To exhibition, 2023
In Tandem Pt. II: The Planet Egg, short film, Cosmic Rays Experimental Film Festival, 2023
And so she works from home… as does she, 16mm, MONO NO AWARE XVI Festival of Cinema Arts, 2022
And so she works from home… as does she, 16mm, Duke Independent Film Festival, 2023
Binaural Elephant, sound installation with moving image, Rubenstein Arts Center Interventions exhibition, 2022
Mandala, short film, Duke University Cinema Arts Film Screening, 2022
Don’t Dream, audio play with moving image, On Air Festival Official Selection, 2021
A Wind Blows from the South, short film, Third Coast International Audio Festival, 2020
Station Hope: A Conversation, short film, Chagrin Documentary Film Festival, 2019
Station Hope: A Conversation, short film, 43rd Cleveland International Film Festival, 2019
Her Poems, short film, Case Western University Alumni Association, 2018
What Remains, short film, Cleveland Public Theatre Station Hope, 2019 + 2018
What Remains, short film, Arts Cleveland Creative Workforce Fellowship, 2017
A Wind Blows from the South, sound installation + dance, Cleveland Public Theatre, 2017
Hysterical, 16mm, Bohemia National Hall, Czech Center New York, 2015
Hysterical, 16mm, Reinberger Gallery Cleveland Institute of Art Faculty Exhibit, 2015
Doppelgänger: A Trip into the Mirror World, by Naomi Klein, 2023
Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts, by Rebecca Hall read by DeWanda Wise, and cast AudioFile Earphones Award, 2022, APA Audie Award Finalist, 2023
1619 Project: A New Origin Story edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The NY Times read by Yusef Komunyakaa, Camille T. Dungy and cast, AudioFile Earphones Award, 2021, APA Audie Award Finalist 2023
Antkind, by Charlie Kaufman, read by Fred Berman, 2020