Clare Major is a cinematographer and documentary filmmaker based in Oakland, California, who specializes in handheld observational camerawork and in stories that illuminate the intersection of cultures and the lives of women and girls.
Clare's work has played at festivals around the world and appeared on HBO, PBS, the Discovery Channel, Netflix and the New York Times, among many others. Her recent documentary work includes roles as Cinematographer on Belly of the Beast (Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2020; Peabody Award Nominee 2021; Emmy winner 2021), which exposes a pattern of illegal sterilizations in California women's prisons; Cinematographer for the Oscar-shortlisted short documentary Holding Moses (SFFILM Festival 2022), which tells the raw and emotional parenthood journey of Randi, a queer, non-binary dancer, and Moses, her disabled son; Cinematographer on The Ants & The Grasshopper (Mountainfilm & Sheffield DocFest 2021), which follows a Malawian farmer activist who travels around the US to convince Americans that climate change is real; Vérité Cinematographer on Ahead of the Curve (Frameline 2020), which tells the story of Curve Magazine and its founder's push for lesbian visibility; and Director of Photography for We Are the Radical Monarchs (SXSW 2019), which follows a group of young girls of color on the front lines of social justice in Oakland, California.
Born and raised in Louisiana, Clare graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with degrees in American Studies, Plan II, and Radio-TV-Film and earned a Master of Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley. Her thesis film, the short documentary Feast & Sacrifice, was a Student Academy Awards national finalist and won First Place Documentary at the 2011 College Television Awards.
Clare served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal and has walked from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail.
In 2020 she was named one of DOC NYC's "40 Under 40" filmmakers to watch
2021
