Silas Munro is a designer, artist, writer, researcher, curator, and surfer. He founded the design studio Polymode, based in Los Angeles and Raleigh, that works with clients across cultural spheres. He's also curator and author of Strikethrough: Typographic Messages of Protest at Letterform Archive in 2022-2023 and contributor to W. E. B. Du Bois's Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America. He co-authored the first BIPOC-centered design history course, Black Design in America: African Americans and the African Diaspora in Graphic Design 19th-21st Century. Silas talks about the Academy Award Winning movie, Moonlight, discussing not only the Oscar blunder but also the movie's sights, sounds, actions, and emotions, from the use of lighting and music to the hero's journey. We see a young boy, Chiron, facing challenges and obstacles in school, mentored by Juan who takes the boy under his wings. Composed of multiple acts, we see Chiron grow into adulthood and reunite with his long lost love, Kevin.
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Silas Munro, descendant of the Banyole people of Eastern Uganda, has had work recently exhibited at the Raizes Gallery at Lesley University, the LA Design Festival, and the Scottsdale Museum of Art, and it is included in the collections of Tufts University, Lesley University, and the Montalvo Arts Center. Upcoming exhibitions in 2025 include a solo show, How Does The Grid Deal with A Messy World? at The University of Hartford's Joseloff Gallery, and in the group show Data Consciousness: Reframing Blackness in Contemporary Print at Print Center New York, curated by Tiffany E. Barber. Munro is Founding Faculty, Chair Emeritus for the MFA Program in Graphic Design at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Find more of his courses such as Behind and Ahead of the Times: Histories and Futures of Black Futurity, Black Data: W.E.B. Du Bois and Data Visualization, Black Queer Stories in Print: 19th Century to the Harlem Renaissance, as well as Funk, Blaxploitation, & Hip Hop Aesthetics at BIPOC Design History's website.
http://www.polymode.studio/
https://www.bipocdesignhistory.com/
https://bipocdesignhistory.com/products/behind-and-ahead-of-the-times-histories-and-futures-of-black-futurity/
https://bipocdesignhistory.com/products/black-data-w-e-b-du-bois-and-data-visualization/
https://bipocdesignhistory.com/products/black-queer-stories-in-print-19th-century-to-the-harlem-renaissance/
https://bipocdesignhistory.com/products/funk-blaxploitation-hip-hop-aesthetics/
https://aadn.gsd.harvard.edu/2024/12/06/silas-munro-tobi-ashiru/
https://raceremix.arts.arizona.edu/guest/silas-munro/
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Moonlight (2016)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4975722/
https://youtu.be/yiTAQjPe_LM?si=aGf2dLAAVeeMpQWK
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/theater/tarell-alvin-mccraney-geffen-playhouse.html
https://shop.a24films.com/products/moonlight-book
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/video/2017/feb/28/who-had-the-card-jimmy-kimmel-explains-oscars-mix-up-video
https://www.vox.com/first-person/2017/3/1/14777110/typography-oscars-2017
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Other movies discussed, alphabetical list
Anora (2024)
Challengers (2024)
