The Visitor Owl

'The Visitor Owl' is a split-screen digital film featuring reenactments of two seminal Sidney Poitier vehicles: 'Blackboard Jungle' (1955) and 'To Sir with Love' 1967). A cast of non-actors ranging from 21 to 61 play the parts of high school delinquents. Their campy performances are echoed in archival footage of mid-century PSAs. In fusing these stories we see the ways Poitier's visibility and significance evolved over a decade of cultural change (and stasis); from the beginnings of Cold War culture in the Fifties to student unrest in the late-Sixties, as well as Hollywood depictions of pedagogy, racism, queer subtext, and adolescence from the 20th century to the present.