Andy Rice PhD

Andy Rice PhD is an assistant professor in Film Studies and Media and Communication in the department of Media, Journalism & Film at Miami University in Ohio.  He conducts research on the feeling of camerawork and performance in community settings and makes documentary films with collaborators about institutional histories, identity, and social change. His recent filmmaking credits include Spirits of Rebellion: Black Independent Cinema from Los Angeles (2017, Cinema Guild, co-producer, editor, and cinematographer), a feature about the LA Rebellion film movement that won the African Movie Academy Award for Best Diaspora Documentary in 2016, among others, and Bittersweet: Black College Life in a Predominantly White Institution (2023, director/co-producer), a feature and community-based archival project about the history of Black life and activism at Miami University–now part of one of the largest archives on the subject in the country. In the medical space, he worked as a cinematographer and sound editor on Co-Motion (2010, Davis) an exploration of the reasons behind low breastfeeding rates among Black women, and he directed and produced seeing pearl (2001) as an undergraduate, a portrait of an eighty-three year old woman struggling to maintain her independence in the face of impending blindness. His book Political Camerawork: Documentary and the Lasting Impact of Reenacting Historical Trauma (2023, Indiana University Press) analyzes documentary films about reenactment performances that represent traumatic historical events in spaces where they once occurred.  He has published seven additional articles on documentary film and community change in venues such as Journal of Film and Video, JumpCut, and Senses of Cinema, among others.  He holds a PhD in Communication and MA in History from UCSD and a BA in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University. Between 2014-17, he was the ASPIRE Fellow in Socially Engaged Media at UCLA.  Dave Rosenthal is his first film collaborator and an old friend.