Information

Biography

His work spans cinema, installation, performance, and artist-led community initiatives, exploring sacred ritual, collaborative processes, existential psychologies, and the mysterious relationships between people and place. He studied Film at the University of New Orleans and earned an MFA in Theatre Design from Tulane University, where he was a Mellon Fellow in Community Engagement.

In 2014, Givens co-founded St. Mary Majak’s, an artist-run cinema and performance space that produced twenty-one original plays and more than two hundred screenings of international cinema over four years. He later co-founded the Beaubourg School, a tuition-free platform for interdisciplinary artistic inquiry, and is a co-founder of Cinema Sanctuary, a volunteer-run film series presenting international cinema in churches throughout New Orleans.

He is currently completing the first two films of the ABC Triptych, an interconnected three-feature cinematic work conceived simultaneously as a trilogy and multi-channel installation. His work has been supported by the Panavision New Filmmaker Program, the Joan Mitchell Center, and Stove Works.

Artist statement

Filmmaking, for me, is a way of learning how to become more attentive to the world. I am drawn to works that slow perception and create space for ambiguity, coincidence, and sustained observation. Rather than offering answers, I hope my work invites viewers into experiences where meaning emerges gradually and specifically for them. I set out to create work that whispers to the precious parts of our self and to do so through meaningful relationships with collaborators, places, and histories that extend beyond individual lives.

My practice moves between cinema, installation, performance, and artist-led cultural initiatives, yet each project begins from the same impulse: to create situations in which people gather around shared acts of focused presence. Research develops through reading, intuitive exploration, conversation, archival study, photography, and repeated returns to people and places. Rather than treating research as preparation, I see it as part of the artwork itself.

I am increasingly drawn to ensemble structures that resist singular protagonists in favor of communities. Like stories once shared around a fire, I believe art can create temporary gatherings where strangers experience themselves as part of something larger.