Salem Mekuria  

SALEM MEKURIA is an independent writer, producer, director, videographer, and a video installation artist. She recently retired as a professor of Art at Wellesley College. Her award winning documentary films and video installations feature Ethiopian subjects and have been shown internationally. Among the numerous honors and grants she has received are: the Luella LaMer Chair in Women's Studies, Wellesley College; a Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University; Fulbright Scholar award; The New England Media Fellowship; the Rockefeller Foundation's Intercultural Media Fellowship; Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest International Artists Residency Fellowship; two fellowships at the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College, Harvard University; the Massachusetts Artists Foundation Award; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation production grant.

She is currently working on the last installment of Square Stories: A Trilogy, and a feature documentary, Awra Amba's Utopia. (7/19)

Available Title(s):


As I Remember It A Portrait of Dorothy West


A film by Salem Mekuria, 1991, 56 min, Color

This intimate portrait of writer Dorothy West explores the forgotten role of women in the Harlem Renaissance. From the perspective of her 83 years, the still active writer relates her memories of growing up African American, privileged and enthralled by literature. Archival footage and photographs, interviews and excerpts from her autobiographical novel, THE LIVING IS…

Read More

Sidet: Forced Exile


A film by Salem Mekuria, 1991, 60 min, Color

During the past two decades, more than two million refugees have left Ethiopia. Famine, poverty and political strife as well as the religious persecution caused by Eritrea’s annexation have already cost countless lives. Narrated by Salem Mekuria, an Ethiopian filmmaker in the US, this lucid documentary presents the life stories of three women refugees in…

Read More
Shopping Cart