How Costume Design Creates Character and Defines Culture in Cinema, An Illustrated Creative Talk with two-time Oscar Winning Costume Designer Ruth E. Carter
Join a history-making costume designer as she opens her design archive and shares the stories woven into creating the costumes, building iconic characters, and imagining cinematic worlds that have defined her extraordinary career and helped redefine the visual language of cinema.
In this intimate and visually rich presentation, Carter takes audiences on a journey through her groundbreaking career and the costumes that have helped shape how Black history, identity, and culture are imagined on screen.
From her groundbreaking collaborations with directors like Spike Lee, Robert Townsend, John Singleton, Steven Spielberg, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Ava DuVernay, and Ryan Coogler, Carter has helped create some of cinema’s most unforgettable characters and worlds that can preserve history, celebrate culture, shape identity, and transform the way Black people are seen and imagined on screen.
Through rare images and behind-the-scenes stories of world building from Black Panther to Do the Right Thing, from Malcolm X to Sinners, Carter explores the power of costume to do more than tell a stories, she reveals how her process through research, artistry, and cultural memory come together to create characters, transport us through time, and build worlds audiences never forget.