Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman

Then that Night…, April 2019

In April, Grizzly Grizzly is proud to present a solo exhibition by San Francisco collaborators Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman. Partners in work and in life, Talisman and Hibbert-Jones have been recognized internationally for their work, winning a host of awards and an Oscar nomination for their animated documentary short, Last Day of Freedom. For their show at Grizzly Grizzly, Talisman and Hibbert-Jones will show prints of stills from Last Day of Freedom and their current films Run with It and Daisy’s Story. The full length feature of Last Day of Freedom will also be presented, with segments of Run with It and Daisy’s Story.

Their works are created in an innovative style; their expressionistic drawings bring intimacy and emotion to a documentary format. In Last Day of Freedom, Bill meditates on his brother’s struggle with mental illness and his eventual execution. In Run with It, De’Jaun recalls his uncle’s mentorship from death row. Daisy’s Story is a mother’s account of her son’s plea to a lesser sentence for a crime he did not commit in order to avoid death row. Each film is a personal narrative that explores the themes of racism, family, institutional bias, injustice in the justice system and the death penalty.

Artist Bios

Dee Hibbert-Jones Nomi Talisman are Academy Award nominated, Emmy® award winning filmmakers for their documentary short film, and internationally recognized artists. Their work incorporates animation, installation, public art and documentary film. Hibbert-Jones and Talisman are Guggenheim Fellows and MacDowell Fellows, and The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University awarded them the 2015 Filmmaker Award. Most recently, they were awarded a residency at The San Francisco Film Society (Filmhouse Residency), a United States Congressional Black Caucus Veterans Braintrust Award in recognition for their “outstanding national commitment to civil rights, and social justice.”, and the California Public Defenders Association 2016 Gideon Award for support to indigent minorities.

Hibbert-Jones and Talismans’ first short animated documentary Last Day of Freedom won Best Short Documentary at the International Documentary (IDA) Awards 2015, a Northern California Emmy 2016 and was nominated for an 88th Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject. The film screened internationally at over thirty international festivals and won twelve festival awards including: Best Short Jury Award at Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Best Short Documentary Hamptons International Film Festival, Golden Strands Award, Outstanding Documentary Short, TallGrass KS, the 2015 Platinum Award Winner Spotlight Documentary Series, as well as the Award of Recognition at the Hollywood International Independent Documentary Awards and was a CINE Eagle Award Documentary Short Finalist.

Hibbert-Jones & Talisman’s work is in the collections of the Academy of Motion Picture Art and Sciences, the Israeli Center for Digital Art, the DeRosa Preserve, Stanford University, Bennington College, University of North Carolina, University of California, Santa Cruz, ArtsBlock UC Riverside, University of California, Berkeley, Duke University Library, Recology Artist’s Collection and the Savidge Collection at the MacDowell Colony.

This project was supported in part by The Velocity Fund administered by Temple Contemporary with generous funding from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.