INFO
Kiernan Francis is a New York–based filmmaker and interdisciplinary image-maker working across photography, moving image, casting, installation, and nightlife programming. Rooted in realism and shaped through trust-based collaboration, his work explores the relationship between image-making, social performance, and lived experience within contemporary subcultural spaces.
Working between documentary sensibility and constructed narrative, Francis develops projects through long-term relationships built across nightlife, fashion, online spaces, street casting, and underground creative communities. His practice often begins within existing social ecosystems where collaboration, desire, performance, and identity unfold simultaneously in front of and behind the camera. While his films are frequently scripted and intentionally staged, they maintain an intimate, observational quality, constructing narrative worlds shaped by subcultural spaces and personal mythologies.
His practice blends casting, directing, producing, styling, and research into a self-sustaining workflow that moves fluidly between highly collaborative productions and independently produced encounters. Across formats, Francis approaches image-making as both a collaborative process and a form of social infrastructure.
Recent projects include Trial Period, a film examining performance and power within New York nightlife that was later featured on the Criterion Channel, and Fashion Year, a six-channel installation first presented in Marseille before subsequent screenings in Berlin and New York. In 2022, his first solo exhibition, Trade Winds, White Heat, was presented at Public Works Administration in New York as a multi-channel installation of video and digital works.
Alongside his artistic practice, Francis frequently collaborates on casting-led editorial and commercial projects with artists, musicians, publications, and fashion brands. He is also the founder of Club POLO, a recurring nightlife project operating across Manhattan and Brooklyn that functions as both a social gathering and a living archive, bringing together artists, musicians, models, nightlife figures, and emerging creatives across generations and disciplines.
His films, screenings, and installations have been presented internationally in New York, Marseille, Berlin, Paris, Rome, Vienna, Turin, and Miami. His work has been featured in Interview Magazine, The New York Times, Document Journal, Crack Magazine, Paper Magazine, Plaster Magazine, Vanity Teen, and the Los Angeles Times.
Francis holds a BFA in Film/Video from Pratt Institute.
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Selected Exhibitions, Screenings & Programs
2026
Screening, Installation, and Artist Interview: Backseat of the Couch, Trial Period, Not Punching, and The Princess Diaries
Studio 1111, curated by Luca Paul; artist interview moderated by Phillip Pyle
Berlin, Germany
2025
Post-Screening Discussion: COFFY
Whitney Review of New Writing, Metrograph
New York, NY, USA
Screening (Selected Films)
Amanda Ba Studio
New York, NY, USA
Group Exhibition
No Tax Gallery
Paris, France
Screening: Trial Period
Vienna Club Commission
Vienna, Austria
Screening: The Liminals
Basement Art Assembly Biennial, presented by DIS
Rome, Italy
2024
Solo Exhibition: New Faces
Preacher’s Daughter Gallery, curated by Madison Kenny
New York, NY, USA
Screening: Fashion Year (Boys Don’t Talk)
Curated by Luca Paul Modersohn
Berlin, Germany
Screening: Trial Period
Curated by Lea Gugler
Berlin, Germany
Screening: Backseat of the Couch
NYSCA Grant Screening
New York, NY, USA
2023
Group Exhibition & Art Fair: SYSTEMA
Les Palais des Arts, curated by Myriam Mokdès and Fiona Omnès
Marseille, France
Screening (Selected Films): Reunion
NeueHouse Madison Square, curated by Sam Stillman and Sean Glass
New York, NY, USA
2022
Solo Exhibition: Trade Winds, White Heat
Public Works Administration, curated by Sam Black and Alison Sirico
New York, NY, USA
2021
Exhibition: Bleeding Out
Curated by Matthew “Tully” Dugan
Miami, FL, USA
2020
Exhibition: Black Tarantula
Curated by MRZB
Turin, Italy