CJ Clarke is an award winning director and writer.

His intersectional practice crosses between narrative and experimental film, XR, photography 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.

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.

He co-directed/wrote and produced the award winning immersive interactive work, Maya: The Birth of a Superhero. Maya won 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.

He co-directed/wrote and produced the experimental sci-fi short Fireflies, which won the Best Experimental Award at the Aesthetica Film Festival.

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.

Centralia: Ghost Dance, a collaboration with Indian artist Poulomi Basu, premiered at The Photographers Gallery in London in 2020.

He produced the immersive films and installation Blood Speaks: A Ritual of Exile which 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 Commission 2018. The three films are distributed by the Tribeca Film Institute.

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).