Terence Nance is artist, musician, and filmmaker born in Dallas, Texas in what was then referred to as the State-Thomas community. He is best known for his directing debut An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, and as the creator of the avant-garde TV program Random Acts of Flyness, which is produced by his production company MVMT for HBO and streams on Max.
Nance wrote, directed, scored, and starred in his first feature film, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, which incorporates an earlier short film, How Would You Feel?, animation and an original score by Nance and Flying Lotus.[2] It premiered in the Sundance Film Festival's New Frontier section in 2012 and was also screened as part of the 2012 New Directors/New Films Festival in New York.[3]
Scholar Terri Francis has described it as "...an experimental film...that recreates the unspoken space amid friendship and relationships. Starring Terence Nance himself and the girl with whom he is caught up in this difficult dance, the film shifts between reconstruction and reimagining using both animation and live action."[4]
The film was also featured at a screening as part of the Afrofuturist Film Festival at the New School on 3 May 2015.[5]
An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and was released theatrically in 2013. In the years following Nance was chosen as one of the 25 new faces of independent film, awarded the Guggenheim fellowship and the USA Artist Award for his multidisciplinary creative practice.
In the summer of 2018, Terence’s Peabody Award-winning television series Random Acts of Flyness debuted on HBO to critical acclaim. The New York Times hailed the show as “hypnotic, transporting and un-categorizable” adding that, "it’s trying to disrupt and re-disrupt your perceptions so that, finally, you can see."[6]
In September 2018, Nance was announced as the director of the sequel to Space Jam, produced by Ryan Coogler.[7] On July 16, 2019, Nance was informed he would be replaced as director of Space Jam: A New Legacy, though he retained both screenwriting and executive producing credits.[8][9]
In 2023, Nance collaborated with Blackstar Projects on his first solo museum show, SWARM at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. The show featured immersive video installations.
The exhibition opened on the heels of season 2 of Random Acts of Flyness, subtitled The Parable of the Pirate and the King. Richard Brody of The New Yorker described season 2 as “a work of music-like Afrofuturism, the closest thing I’ve seen to a cinematic reflection of the tones and moods of the music of Sun Ra, complete with the mythopoetic dimension.”[10]
^"Close-Up Gallery: The Afrosurrealist Film Society". Retrieved 3 January 2017.Francis, Terri. "Close-Up Gallery: The Afrosurrealist Film Society." Black Camera 5.1 (2013): 209-219. Project MUSE. Web. 3 May. 2015.
