I decide, I define: women of color documentary filmmakers speak out

Defining Myself for Myself: Women of Color Make Documentary

Saturday, October 12, 3pm am-4:30pm

Long Island University, Brooklyn (DeKalb & Flatbush Aves)
Room: LLC 116, Selena Gallery

Women of color offer an original perspective and point of view, documenting films that are not just the recording of reality. They are purposeful in their storytelling intent. Their stories define women of color by women of color. Our discussion explores the uniqueness that is the female documentarian of color. What are the particular perspectives of our storytellers which impact their films and make them so unique? How can we ensure that we can continue to define ourselves in the face of forces that seek to tell us who we are?

GUESTS:

Shantrelle P. Lewis, producer/director of the forthcoming film Black Pete, Zwarte Piet: The Documentary

Dr. Marta Vega, director When the Spirits Dance Mambo

Christine Turner, director of Homegoings and Rubber Soles.

Moderator: Leslie Fields-Cruz, VP of Operations & Director of Programming, National Black Programming Consortium.

Tickets: $7. For information call: 212-865-2982 or 718-488-1624.

Buy tickets here.

For information on Reel Sisters, click here.

Silence will not protect you.

I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language."

I began to ask each time: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.

Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end.

And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking. 

― Audre Lorde, "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action," Sister Outsider

Women of color in charge: seminar, panel on arts administration

The Apollo Theater Education Program will present a seminar and career panel--Behind the Scenes: Women of Color in the Arts on Monday, March 11.

Seminar: 4:30pm
Panel discussion: 6:30pm

Free to the public. Reservations required: Click here.

The Apollo's annual Women's History Month celebration features a panel of women of color who work behind the scenes in performing arts administration. A pre-panel seminar on cultural diversity in marketing and public relations for the performing arts will be facilitated by Donna Walker-Kuhne.

Presented in collaboration with Women of Color in the Arts (WOCA)