Pemon Rami

Pemon Rami is an author, international film producer and director, member of the Board of the Illinois Arts Council, a member of the Luminary Board of the Independent Film Alliance, former member of the Joseph Jefferson Theatre Awards committee, and former National Endowment for the Arts Program Evaluator. While in his teens Rami was cast in a reoccurring role on the weekly PBS TV series Bird of the Iron Feather: television’s first black soap opera. He also appeared in the acclaimed feature films The Spook Who Sat by The Door and Mahogany. 

Rami has served as Associate Director of Theodore Ward’s South Side Center for the Performing Arts; director of the Kuumba Workshop; Artistic/Managing Director of the Lamont Zeno Theatre; Managing/Artistic Director for the Phoenix Black Theatre Troupe, and General Manager for Marla Gibbs Crossroads National Education and Entertainment Complex in Los Angeles. The first African American film casting director in Chicago, Rami provided talent for the classic feature films and television movies; Blues Brothers, Cooley High, and Uptown Saturday Night. Rami produced the feature film Of Boys and Men starring Angela Bassett and Robert Townsend and 93 Days starring Danny Glover and for which Rami was nominated for an African Academy Award and an African People’s Choice Award. 

As Director of Education and Public programs for the DuSable Museum from 2011 to 2016, Rami coordinated the Interdisciplinary African and African American Studies Professional Development training for Chicago Public School as well as the Illinois Amistad Commission curriculum for the Illinois State Board of Education. In January 2020 Rami was commissioned to develop the curriculum framework for the Terra Academy for the Arts, the leading cultural center in Nigeria.