CJ Clarke is an award winning director, writer, author and producer. Crossing between narrative and experimental film, XR and installation, his work explores themes and stories at the intersection youth, identity and class. He often collaborates with other artists to enable and activate historically marginalised and socially engaged narratives.

Since 2013 he has been collaborating with Poulomi Basu on her on going transmedia project Blood Speaks: A Ritual of Exile and its new phase Maya: The Birth of a Superhero, which won the Special Jury Mention Award at the Tribeca Film Festival 2023, was selected in competition Festival de Cannes 2024, CPH:DOX 2024 and SXSW 2024, Winner Anidox Best XR Award, Winner European XR Awards 2024, shortlisted for the BFI/Chanel Award and exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Comprising an installation and three VR experiences, the project premièred at the Margaret Mead Film Festival at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, was presented at SXSW in 2019, selected for the Sheffield Doc Fest Meet Market 2018, and short-listed for the Sheffield Doc Fest Interactive Commission2018. The three films are distributed by the Tribeca Film Institute.

In 2022, Fireflies, an eco-feminist two channel film, produced in collaboration with Poulomi Basu, premiered at Autograph ABP in London and won the Best Experimental Award at the Aesthetica Film Festival. Centralia: Ghost Dance, also a collaboration with Basu, premiered at The Photographers Gallery in London in 2020. His film Cody’s Story won the inaugural BJP/Canon Open Shutter award and his film It Shouldn’t Happen Here was commissioned by Save the Children’s to launch their UK poverty campaign.
His debut photobook Magic Party Place is collected by Museum of Modern Art (USA) and was shortlisted for the Aperture Paris Photo First Book Award 2016, Arles Authors Book Award 2017 and Photo Espana Book of the Year 2017.
Following the publication of the book he worked on an experiment short doc with Channel 4 and a multi-screen installation that was shown at the 2017 FORMAT Festival, at the Beirut Arts Centre as part of the 2017 Sharjah Biennial and in London’s Rich Mix.

His film Cody’s Story won the BJP/Canon Open Shutter award. He also wrote and directed It Shouldn’t Happen Here to launch Save the Children’s UK poverty campaign. He has produced and directed TV ads for RSPCA and recently for Centrepoint’s Christmas campaign with Imelda Staunton.

Widely exhibited, his work has been shown in The Photographer’s Gallery (UK) and Sharjah Biennial (Lebanon) amongst others. His work is held in the collections of Museum of Modern Art (USA), Harvard Arts Museums (USA) and Victoria & Albert Museums (UK).