Fairbanks, Charles

He studied the programs in Art and Science, Technology, and Society at Stanford University and a masters degree in Art and Design at Michigan Univesity, in the United States. He has received scholarships and participated in artist residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Wexner Art Center Film & Video Studio Program and the MacDowell Colony. In 2010, his short film Irma was selected in a number of festivals and won awards such as the Short: Dox at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival and the Eileen Maitland Award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. That same year he presented Flexing Muscles, a short film that was shown in festivals such as the Mexico City International Documentary Film Festival (DocsDF), in Mexico; the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, in the United States; and Visions du Réel, in Switzerland. Flexing Muscles also won the Jury Award at the Atlanta Film Festival. He has worked in Mexico since 2001, as a photographer, filmmaker and professor in video art at the University of Sciences and Arts of Chiapas (UNICACH). He has also imparted workshops on filmmaking on mobile phones for young scholars from the indigenous communities of Casa de la Mujer, in Oaxaca. His first feature film, co-directed with Saul Kak, La selva negra (2016), part of the Official Selection of the 14th Morelia International Film Festival (FICM), has been shown in festivals like the Guanajuato International Film Festival (GIFF), in México, and Visions du Réel, in Switzerland, among others. He is currently a professor of film in Ohio, United States.