MFA Directing/Screenwriting, Columbia University BA (Hons) Television Drama, University of Cape Town BA Film Production, University of Cape Town
Series Mania Writer’s Campus 2024 Realness Institute African Screenwriters Residency 2023 AuthenticA Series Lab by Realness Institute, The StoryBoard Collective and Series Mania 2022-23 Columbia Blue List 2023 Sundance International Narrative Filmmaker-in Residence at the Jacob Burns Film Center 2022 Sundance Institute Screenwriter’s Lab 2019 SFFILM Rainin Grant Finalist 2019 IFP Week Project Forum 2019 National Board of Review Student Grant 2018 Katharina Otto-Bernstein Thesis Film Fund Recipient ASCAP Foundation Film Scoring Workshop Selection Big Sky Edit Visionary Award Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective NYWIFT Next Wave Girls in Film South Africa Ambassador
Chantel Clark is a South African director and screenwriter working between Cape Town and New York.
She is developing her feature directorial debut, Wit Gesigte (Pale Faces), which was selected for the Sundance Institute’s January 2019 Screenwriters Lab, IFP's 41st IFP Week Project Forum, and was made a SFFILM Spring 2019 Rainin Grant Finalist. Most recently, Chantel was invited as the Artist-in-Residence at the Jacob Burns Film Center as the 2022 Sundance International Narrative Filmmaker-in-Residence and she is currently a fellow in the inaugural AuthenticA Series Lab 2022-23, presented by Realness Institute, The StoryBoard Collective and Series Mania.
An MFA graduate of the Film Program at Columbia University, her short film, Our Albertinia, was awarded a 2018 National Board of Review Student Grant, as well as the inaugural Columbia University/Big Sky Edit Visionary Award and screened at over 25 international film festivals. She is also the recipient of a Katharina Otto-Bernstein Thesis Film Fund Grant and was selected for inclusion in the ASCAP Foundation 2018 Film Scoring program in collaboration with Columbia University. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Film and Media Production and her Bachelor of Arts Honours in Television Drama from the University of Cape Town.
Experimenting with time and collective memory, Chantel’s films exist at the intersection of the supernatural and the speculative. Framing fiction through historical research, her narratives play out parallel to significant turning points in South African History.
Chantel is currently an ambassador for Girls in Film South Africa, a member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective, and a mentor for the Sunshine Cinema Spark Impact Program (in association with the University of Cape Town).
