J Bird Lathon

J Bird Lathon is a multidisciplinary artist, designer and filmmaker born and raised in Clarksville, TN. As a freelance designer he has designed logos, original typefaces, sportswear, motion graphics, animated sequences and books. As a filmmaker he is interested in a cinema of artist, outcasts, eccentrics and iconoclasts that’s aesthetically irreverent, innovative and informative. He has become a part of the Sundance community to find a home for his semi autobiographical narrative feature A LITTLE VICTORY, the story of a teenage, mixed blood African-American and Cherokee boy who becomes a man in the process of finding the killer of his best friend. Mr. Lathon is currently creative producing TO THE FIREFLIES, the narrative debut of award winning director Kerri Gawryn - a magical realist story of a troubled teenage girl coming to terms with abuse she suffered as a child. In 2000 he wrote, produced, directed and edited his first films THE PROCESS AND MS RIGHT NOW. Both received a Special Award for short films at the 2002 Black International Cinema Festival in Berlin. They also screened (out of competition) with other Brooklyn filmmakers at the Cannes Film Festival, sponsored by Gazm.org that same year. His short NUMBERS FROM A MONTGOMERY JAIL, used original poetry, historical photographs, arrest records and sound design to tell its story about the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It premiered at the 2007 Nashville Film Festival, where he served as a screener, juror, volunteer, digital artist and co-writer of the Livin’ Reel Youth Outreach program from 2004 to 2014. Another current project IMPALED & INHALED uses his personal photographs and original poetry to relate his experiences during and after the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11th. It was conceived after fielding questions about the day during his first Artist In Residency at Hastings College. As the Art Director for the Downtown Film Festival L.A., he created the key art and branding for the festival. As the programmer of the Architecture & Design Series, he curated a selection of films about buildings and objects and the emotional connections that tell their stories. See more of his work at https://www.behance.net/BOPArts and https://vimeo.com/boparts.