Prologue
Prologue
Sophia Nahli Allison
Sophia Nahli Allison
A cinematic dreamscape awakens a love story between two Black women in the early 1900s.
Blurring the boundaries of time and space, Prologue lingers like a half-remembered dream, immersing viewers in the poetic and fragmented echoes of history and memory. The film serves as a radical intervention into the visual historiography of Black lesbians and queerness in the early 20th century. Prologue is inspired by a rare historical photograph filmmaker Sophia Nahli Allison acquired, which is over 110 years old.
As a short film and cinematic installation, Prologue serves as the precursor to Allison’s debut narrative feature, No Kisses Like Youres’.
Experimental Film, Film/Moving Image, Narrative Film
2025
About Sophia Nahli Allison
Los Angeles, California
Sophia Nahli Allison is an Academy Award® nominated filmmaker, self-portrait photographer, and artist from South Central Los Angeles. A black lesbian myth, she reimagines the archives by excavating hidden truths. She conspires with themes of flight, memories, dreams, and time to unearth and awaken spiritual archives while capturing the nuanced poetics of Black women’s interiority. Sophia is a 2024 DOC NYC “40 Under 40” honoree, the recipient of a 2020 United States Artists Fellowship Award, and a 2014 Chicago 3Arts Award. She has held residencies at Black Rock Senegal, MacDowell, The Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France., The Center for Photography at Woodstock and American Documentary and POV Spark’s African Interactive Art Residency. She has directed national commercials such as Pandora’s Be Love and Lululemon’s A Woman’s Foot and was the photographer and creative director of Sleater-Kinney’s 2024 album cover, Little Rope. She received a 2021 Academy Award nomination for her short experimental documentary A Love Song For Latasha (2019), of which she was the director, cinematographer, editor, and a producer. She and her team had the first Latasha Harlins mural created in South Central Los Angeles in collaboration with Netflix and artist Victoria Cassinova that same year. Sophia was the director and co-writer of the 2021 HBO Max special Eyes On The Prize: Hallowed Ground. She holds a Master’s in visual communication from UNC Chapel Hill and a Bachelor’s in photojournalism from Columbia College Chicago. During the spring of 2024, she was a visiting professor at CalArts, teaching a course she structured entitled Memories and Dreamscapes.
Sophia Nahli Allison is an Academy Award® nominated filmmaker, self-portrait photographer, and artist from South Central Los Angeles. A black lesbian myth, she reimagines the archives by excavating hidden truths. She conspires with themes of flight, memories, dreams, and time to unearth and awaken spiritual archives while capturing the nuanced poetics of Black women’s interiority. Sophia is a 2024 DOC NYC “40 Under 40” honoree, the recipient of a 2020 United States Artists Fellowship Award, and a 2014 Chicago 3Arts Award. She has held residencies at Black Rock Senegal, MacDowell, The Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France., The Center for Photography at Woodstock and American Documentary and POV Spark’s African Interactive Art Residency. She has directed national commercials such as Pandora’s Be Love and Lululemon’s A Woman’s Foot and was the photographer and creative director of Sleater-Kinney’s 2024 album cover, Little Rope. She received a 2021 Academy Award nomination for her short experimental documentary A Love Song For Latasha (2019), of which she was the director, cinematographer, editor, and a producer. She and her team had the first Latasha Harlins mural created in South Central Los Angeles in collaboration with Netflix and artist Victoria Cassinova that same year. Sophia was the director and co-writer of the 2021 HBO Max special Eyes On The Prize: Hallowed Ground. She holds a Master’s in visual communication from UNC Chapel Hill and a Bachelor’s in photojournalism from Columbia College Chicago. During the spring of 2024, she was a visiting professor at CalArts, teaching a course she structured entitled Memories and Dreamscapes.