Profile
Afro-Queer Artist/Filmmaker Topher Campbell’s output spans film, theatre, performance, writing, and site-specific work. He makes bold and exciting work focusing on sexuality, masculinity, race, human rights, memoir and climate change. Alumni of the Regional Theatre Young Directors Scheme In 2005 he was recipient of the Jerwood Directors Award and nominated for the 2011 What’s On Stage Theatre Event of the Year Award. In 2017 he was longlisted for the inaugural Spread the Word Life Writing Prize for his forthcoming memoir Battyman.
In 2000 he co-founded rukus! Federation a Black Queer arts collective with photographer Ajamu X. This culminated in the internationally recognised rukus! Archive currently held in the London Metropolitan Archives. The rukus! Archive won the 2008 Landmark Archive Award. His theatre workHis films have appeared in festivals worldwide including his first film The Homecoming - a meditation on art, masculinity and sexuality, featuring commentary by Stuart Hall. His film FETISH, a collaboration with 2014 Mercury Music Prize Winners Young Fathers, is shot on the streets of New York. It was premiered at the Barbican Centre, London, Official Selection for the 2018 Aesthetica Short Film Festival and 2018 Scottish Queer International Film Festival and 2021 Sheffield DocFEST.
Topher is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Patron of Switchboard and in 2017 and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Sussex for his work in the Black LGBTQ+ community. He has directed productions and films for Mountview Academy, Central School of Speech and Drama, Guildhall School of Music and ArtsEd. His latest film, Moments That Shaped Queer Black Britain is a documentary about UK Black Queer history and culture for B.E.T./Paramount streaming now in the UK.