Dr. Artel Great is an American writer, Independent Spirit Award-nominated filmmaker, Black cinema scholar, and leading authority on race and popular culture. His insightful contributions bridge the gap between Black intellectual traditions, film, television, and social justice.
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He earned his PhD from New York University, and he is the first Black valedictorian at UCLA Film School (TFT), where he graduated summa cum laude and holds his BA and MA degrees.
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As a socially-engaged filmmaker and cultural historian, his work transcends boundaries and defies conventional categorization, addressing the myriad links between art and politics.​​​ ​​He has written on Black film and media in academic and mainstream publications.
Dr. Great is the author of The Black Pack: Comedy, Race, & Resistance (Rutgers University Press, 2025), which is the first book to chronicle the untold history behind the iconic collaborations between a legendary group of comedians — Eddie Murphy, Paul Mooney, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Robert Townsend, and Arsenio Hall — who joined forces as the “Black Pack” in the late 1980s to create a series of socially-charged films and TV shows that revolutionized popular culture and changed the face of American comedy.
His influential essay Black Cinema Matters was published in The New Republic magazine and ​ he is the co-editor of the landmark book
Black Cinema & Visual Culture: Art and Politics in the 21st Century (Routledge, 2023), which debuted number one on Amazon: New Releases. ​
Dr. Great has taught courses on film, television, race, media, and visual culture at UCLA, NYU, University of Oregon, and Spelman College.
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He is the Cultural Critic-in-Residence at San Francisco's Museum of the African Diaspora, where he has established a dynamic public programming platform.​ He is the George and Judy Marcus Endowed Chair in African-American Cinema Studies and Assistant Professor of Cinema & Media Studies at San Francisco State University.
His professional output also extends to major Hollywood studio films like the box-office hit Save the Last Dance, Oprah Winfrey's Their Eyes Were Watching God, and the indie classic Dahmer, opposite Jeremey Renner.
He has written and directed two award-winning motion pictures that explore the decolonization of Black narratives from often reductive depictions. His films have been showcased in major multiplexes, art-house theaters, in national and international film festivals, including on cable, broadcast television, and popular streaming platforms like Amazon and Netflix.​​