Christine Turner is a filmmaker whose portraits of artists, activists and everyday people capture the beauty and struggle of life. Her second feature, Sun Ra: Do the Impossible—a journey through the life and work of the visionary jazz musician, composer and poet Sun Ra—premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival.
Previously, Christine directed the 2024 Oscar-nominated short documentary, The Barber of Little Rock (co-directed with John Hoffman), about a local barber's fight for a just economy (The New Yorker). In 2023 she released, J’Nai Bridges: Unamplified, which follows the acclaimed opera singer as she takes the stage in “A Knee on the Neck,” a tribute to George Floyd (PBS/American Masters).
Other notable work includes: Lynching Postcards: ‘Token of a Great Day’ (Paramount+), which was nominated for a Peabody and won an NAACP Image Award; Homegoings (PBS/POV), a critically-acclaimed portrait of a renowned Harlem funeral director; and the two artist profiles Betye Saar: Taking Care of Business (New York Times Op-Docs) and Paint & Pitchfork (The New Yorker).
As an episodic director and producer for television, Christine has also collaborated on non-fiction series such as The 1619 Project (Hulu), Amend: The Fight for America (Netflix) and Art in the Twenty-First Century (PBS), among others. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Directors Guild of America and serves on the board of the non-profit Art21.