MoAD & SFMOMA present a collection of short films followed by a post screening discussion with LIMITLESS curator Cornelius Moore and San Francisco State University Film Studies professor Rae Shaw.

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MoAD’s groundbreaking exhibition UNBOUND: Art, Blackness, and the Universe invites audiences to experience Blackness as expansive, limitless, and cosmic, reaching beyond the boundaries of Earth into space, time, and imagination.

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In dialogue, with the exhibition, the Limitless film series brings together award-winning films from across the African Diaspora, including the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, the Caribbean, French Guiana, Nigeria, and Zambia. Spanning narrative, documentary, and experimental work, these films explore speculative futures, ancestral memory, science fiction, African mythology, and visionary figures such as Octavia Butler and George Clinton.

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Together, the exhibition and film series offer an invitation to think beyond constraint and to imagine new possibilities for being, becoming, and belonging. Select screenings will feature guest filmmakers and speakers, offering audiences a chance to engage more deeply with the stories and ideas shaping this dynamic cinematic experience.

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About the Films

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LISTEN TO THE BEAT OF OUR IMAGES (Audrey Jean Baptiste and Maxime Jean Baptiste, 15 minutes, in French with English subtitles, 2021)

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A fictional documentary about the Kourou Space Center in 1960s French Guiana which transforms colonial records into a poetic narrative about lost homes, silenced memories and reclaiming history.

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FLIGHT (Kia Moses and Adrian McDonald, 13 minutes, 2018)

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A charming short fiction film from Jamaica about a young boy who wants to go to the moon to be close to his deceased mother in heaven.

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T (Keisha Rae Witherspoon, 14 minutes, 2019)

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A stylistically dazzling and deeply moving work in which a film crew follows participants in Miami’s annual T Ball, where folks assemble to model RIP T-shirts and innovative costumes designed honor their dead.

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ORIKI OSHUN (Elena Guzman, 16 minutes, 2025)

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A visual praise poem honoring the mother of the sweet waters, the Orisha Oshun—a central figure in Yoruba cosmology and spirituality.

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REBIRTH IS NECESSARY (Jenn Nkiru, 10 minutes, 2017)

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Blending past, present and future this vibrant poetic film explores Afrofuturism, and Black universality through kaleidoscopic visuals of movement, archival footage and rich soundscapes of music.

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About the Speaker

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Rae Shaw is a Black female writer-director whose work has been evolving to stretch the boundaries of how Black women see and are seen in the world. Her work concentrates on lifting the experiences of Black women and women of color by telling stories that dimensionalize us in spaces that have sought to diminish, exploit and punish us through stereotypes. Her screenplays have won honors at top international screenwriting competitions, and her film work has screened at top film festivals. She is the author of the recent book, THE SHORT, from MWP, the foremost publisher of independent filmmaking books.

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As a filmmaker, shorts curator, and script archivist her current work seeks to defy category, challenge impossibility, and build safe spaces for women and people of color to be vulnerable and authentic; and to play with the lines of reality and fiction; genre, form and time, and still and moving media. She is the recipient of several fellowships including recent Mellon and ITVS DDF Fellowships. Professor Shaw teaches in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University.

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