Shari Frilot
Shari Frilot (born June 18, 1965) is an artist, filmmaker, and chief curator of the New Frontier program at the Sundance Film Festival. She is the director of two short films (Fly Boy, 1989 and Strange & Charmed, 2003), and one documentary feature (Black Nations/Queer Nations?, 1995). Frilot has been chief curator of the New Frontier program since 2007, where she leads programming of new experimental American film and has developed an exhibition space at the Sundance Film Festival which hosts "digital artworks, media installations, and multimedia performance," including cinematic and artistic projects that make use of virtual reality technology.
Shari Frilot

Sarah K Joyce · Sarah K Joyce / WikiPortraits · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Name
- Shari Frilot
- Born
- 18 June 1965
- Occupation
- * Artist
- Awards
- Peabody Award (2022)
- Nationality
- United States
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Shari Frilot (born June 18, 1965) is an artist, filmmaker, and chief curator of the New Frontier program at the Sundance Film Festival. She is the director of two short films (Fly Boy, 1989 and Strange & Charmed, 2003), and one documentary feature (Black Nations/Queer Nations?, 1995). Frilot has been chief curator of the New Frontier program since 2007, where she leads programming of new experimental American film and has developed an exhibition space at the Sundance Film Festival which hosts "digital artworks, media installations, and multimedia performance," including cinematic and artistic projects that make use of virtual reality technology.
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In this article
Biography
Biography
In her role as chief curator of New Frontier, the integration of new technologies has included an international open call for VR-based projects, integration of haptic technologies, and the platforming of projects that made use of artificial intelligence in their creation. Frilot has described the work of New Frontier by saying, "We wanted to cultivate an artistic and social environment to disarm people when they entered the space. It was a way of unlocking inhibitions and encouraging audiences to think about opening themselves up to the new rules and cinematic suggestions which the New Frontier artists are inviting you to consider." Her interests as a curator and a filmmaker are informed by her early experiences within a creative community of queer artists of color. Alongside documentary filmmakers like Marlon Riggs, Cheryl Dunye, and Isaac Julien, Frilot was part of a generation of African-American directors whose work explicitly addressed issues of racial and sexual identity in the last two decades of twentieth century. From 1992 to 1996, she served as Director of the gay and lesbian experimental film festival MIX festival in New York City, where she also co-founded the first gay Latin American subsidiary film festivals, MIX BRASIL and MIX MEXICO. She also served as co-director of Programming for OUTFEST from 1998 to 2001, where she founded the festival's Platinum Oasis, which introduced cinematic performance installation and performance to the festival for the first time. In 2010, she was a featured speaker at the University of California, Berkeley's Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium, where she presented a talk entitled "The Power of the Erotic: Curatorial Strategies at Sundance's New Frontier."

Shari Frilot and Olive Nwosu at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival for LADY.
Gabriel Brooks · Gabriel Brooks / WikiPortraits

Shari Frilot and Olive Nwosu at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival for LADY.
Gabriel Brooks · Gabriel Brooks / WikiPortraits
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Shari Frilot • Born — 18 June 1965 • Occupation — * Artist • filmmaker • Awards — Peabody Award (2022)
Accolades
Accolades
• 2022: Peabody Award - Visionary Award within the Immersive & Interactive category.
Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- “Shari Frilot”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
authority record
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q72570001: Shari Frilot
General reference · Wikidata
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Herndon, Jessica. How Sundance Programmer Shari Frilot Keeps the Film Festival Diverse. Essence. January 21, 2016.
- 2.Welbon, Yvonne. Sisters in the Life: A History of Out African American Lesbian Media-Making. Duke University Press. 2018. 978-0822371854.
- 3.New Frontier exhibition at Sundance focuses on the future. Los Angeles Times. 2015-01-22.
- 4.Jacobson, Ken. Creating a New World: A Conversation with Shari Frilot, Chief Curator, New Frontier. International Documentary Association. 2018-03-28.
- 5.Mousley, Sheryl. New Frontier at Sundance Film Festival: 10 Years of Changing Boundaries. Leonardo. 49. 2. 109–112. 2016. 0024-094X.
- 6.Ferrera-Balanquet, Raúl. XII Black International Cinema Anthology 1993-1997. Fountainhead. 1997.
- 7.Macmillan Reference USA. Encyclopedia of African-American culture and history : the Black experience in the Americas. 629. 2006. 0028658167.
- 8.Rastegar, Roya. Curating 'Physical Cinema' at Sundance's New Frontier. The Scholar and Feminist Online: Barnard Center for Research on Women. Summer 2012.
- 9.The Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium. ATC Lecture Series.
- 10.Voyles, Blake. 83rd Peabody Award Winners. September 13, 2023.
References
Citations
References
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