Christine Turner

Christine Turner is a filmmaker whose portraits of artists, activists and everyday people capture the beauty and struggle of life. Her most recent film, Sun Ra: Do the Impossible—a journey through the life and work of the visionary jazz musician Sun Ra—has screened in over 40 international festivals, cinemas and museums and was broadcast on PBS/American Masters in 2026.Previously, Christine directed the 2024 Oscar-nominated short, The Barber of Little Rock (co-directed with John Hoffman), about a local barber's fight for a just economy (The New Yorker). Her film, J’Nai Bridges Unamplified, released in 2023, follows the Grammy-nominated opera singer as she takes the stage in “A Knee on the Neck,” a choral 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; short films on pioneering artist Betye Saar (NYTimes Op-Docs) and celebrated painters Amy Sherald & Kehinde Wiley (The New Yorker); and the feature-length Homegoings (PBS), Christine’s critically-acclaimed portrait of a renowned Harlem funeral director. As a director and producer for television, Christine has also contributed to 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. Christine is based in San Francisco, CA.

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ABOUT J'Nai Bridges Unamplified

In J’Nai Bridges Unamplified, the critically acclaimed and Grammy–winning opera singer J’Nai Bridges takes the stage in A Knee on the Neck, a choral tribute to George Floyd.

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