Though best known as a filmmaker, Charles Fairbanks has won several awards for his documentary photography. His first series, on Mexican Lucha Libre, was selected for PDN’s annual “Year’s Best Photography” issue. He has photographed for Fortune Magazine and for the Yellow Springs News.
Fairbanks also makes “entertaining and heartfelt films [that] are extremely easy to enjoy and very hard to forget” (Anthology Film Archives). These films have shown on POV and at CPH:DOX, Ambulante, Visions du Réel, Art of the Real, and over 100 other festivals across five continents. They’ve been awarded for their humor and sensitivity, for depicting women’s experience, indigenous life, familial struggles and the documentary encounter. This work has garnered support from the Guggenheim foundation, MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Wexner Art Center.
His feature documentary The Modern Jungle was made in collaboration with Saul Kak, a Zoque painter from rural Chiapas, Mexico. The Modern Jungle won jury awards at Slamdance and Athens, and Best Documentary at Présence Autochtone: the First Nations festival of Montreal.
Furthermore, Fairbanks has written for Senses of Cinema, Millenium Film Journal, and Desist Film, and he has programmed for Belgian festival Courtisane. He founded the Media Arts program at Antioch College, and currently lives in Oaxaca, Mexico.