Ernest Dickerson, 2025 Hirshon Artist-in-Residence, Inspires Students to Explore the Power of Visual Storytelling
“My mantra is that creation is a patient search because you’re creating a world, an environment that you have to put into your movie, which takes time. I’ve spent a lot of time online going through photographs, looking at paintings by the great masters, looking at a lot of stuff to get ideas. I tell a lot of directors, don’t worry if you can’t come up with an idea just like that, because it is a patient search. It takes time to really pull ideas together,” said the renowned American filmmaker Ernest Dickerson during a master class for New School students interested in directing. Dickerson was at the university as the spring 2025 Hirshon Artist-in-Residence at the School of Media Studies, hosting master classes for students interested in cinematography and directing along with a screening and Q&A for the public.
The Dorothy Hirshon Artist-in-Residence program was established by the New School trustee Dorothy Hirshon to honor excellence and promote education in the filmmaking arts at The New School. Previous Hirshon Artists-in-Residence include Mary Harron, Raoul Peck, Christine Vachon, Sean Baker, Laurie Anderson, James Cameron Mitchell, D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, Benh Zeitlin, Ramin Bahrani, and John Waters.
Dickerson’s residency centers on the theme “Writing with the Camera” and explores the use of visuals as a powerful storytelling tool. A renowned cinematographer and director and master storyteller, Dickerson launched his career during the 1990s golden age of Black cinema as the director of photography for the iconic films Brother from Another Planet, She’s Gotta Have It, School Daze, Do the Right Thing, Mo’ Better Blues, and Malcolm X. He has honed his distinctive visual style in the decades since, using it to examine themes of identity, social justice, and human resilience.
“Ernest’s vision has brought to life and shaped the stories of many notable films and TV series that span genres, media, and audiences. We were honored to welcome Ernest to our campus and give our students and the public the opportunity to engage with one of the most gifted and experienced cinematographers and filmmakers in the industry,” said Vladan Nikolic, dean of the School of Media Studies at The New School.
During the directing master class, Dickerson shared clips from some of his films, including Juice, Surviving the Game, Bones, and Double Play, to show how he takes inspiration from film, music, and other media and emphasize the need for filmmakers to have an understanding of film history. About his feature directorial debut, Juice, which launched the film careers of Omar Epps and Tupac Shakur, Dickerson said, “We [Dickerson and writer Gerard Brown] wrote it as a film noir with the main characters as 16-, 17-year-old kids. Why not? It had a lot of the elements of film noir, and that was our intention. One of the things I try to do is take old, aged wine and put it in new bottles, to take a classic structure and put it in a more modern type of presentation.”
Dickerson added, “I’ve always been fascinated by musicians and who they listen to when they’re at home. Who influenced Prince? Who did he listen to when he was at home by himself? I heard a great radio broadcast in which Paul McCartney talked about who he listens to when he’s at home, who influences him.
“You have to watch movies. That’s where inspiration comes from. If you love it, then you would naturally do it, but you have to love it.”