Justice Jamal Jones is a filmmaker, performer, and cultural alchemist based in New York City whose work moves at the rhythm of spirit. Rooted in the cosmologies of the African Diaspora—particularly Haitian Vodou—they use cinema as ritual and dance as invocation, crafting stories that honor the body as an archive and a vessel for ancestral memory.
Their debut film How To Raise a Black Boy is a cinematic prayer that links childhood, spirit, and rebirth, and has screened at over 30 international festivals. A 2021 Sundance Ignite Fellow, Jones’s’s visionary work has been commissioned by MTV, Calvin Klein, Converse, and ARRI.
Dance is central to Jones’s storytelling—both as sacred practice and embodied resistance. In Vodou, where movement is a form of possession, their films summon spirit through choreography, gesture, and repetition. Their mixed-media work Notes on a Siren, created in the Cayman Islands, explores Black magick, femme power, and transmutation through water, body, and motion.
Jones is currently developing a feature film on Romaine La Prophetess, the gender-shifting seer and revolutionary of the Haitian Revolution. Through ritual performance and archival activation, the film reclaims Romaine’s legacy as a spiritual and political force. Their upcoming short film Crossroads Blues continues this lineage work—exploring choice, embodiment, and the spirits we carry. For Jones, movement is not metaphor—it is memory, transmission, and the oldest language of the soul.
Back to Black Artists Space to Create
ankita sharma, photo by Deming Haines
“The festival was such a wonderfully supportive community of artists to perform amongst and a generous audience as well. The performances were inspiring and exceptionally well-run, which I appreciated.”
– ankita sharma
New Dance Alliance
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