Award-winning filmmakers Ayoka Chenzira and Aishah Shahidah Simmons will present their films and discuss their careers as pioneering activists, filmmakers, producers, and writers at "In Focus and Outspoken: Women Filmmaker Colloquium" on Wednesday, Feb. 25, at 5:30 p.m. in Kirner-Johnson 109 at Hamilton College. This event is free and open to the public.
Ayoka Chenzira is the first William and Camille Olivia Hanks Cosby Endowed Professor in Communication Arts at Spelman College. She is former chair of the department of media and communication arts at the City College of New York, and co-founded the college's M.F.A. in media arts production, the first graduate program of its kind at a public institution. Chenzira is an award-winning film and video artist whose works encompass feature, animation, documentary, performance art and experimental productions. She is considered to be the first black woman animator, and is one of the first black women to write, produce and direct a 35mm feature film, Alma's Rainbow, listed in Billboard Magazine as one of the top home video rentals (May 1998). Her film Hair Piece: a Film for Nappyheaded People was voted one of the top 50 films to assist educators with discussions of race. She is also the founder and ceo of Red Carnelian Films, a Brooklyn-based production and distribution company dedicated to bringing thought-provoking and entertaining stories about black life and culture to the screen through its black "Indie" Classics Collection.
Aishah Shahidah Simmons is the producer, writer, and director of "NO!" the forthcoming feature-length documentary that exposes and addresses the collective silence in the black community when black women and girls are raped by black men and boys. She is an award-winning black feminist lesbian independent filmmaker, international lecturer, and activist based in Philadelphia. An incest and rape survivor, her internationally acclaimed shorts "Silence...Broken," "In My Father's House," and "NO!" explore the issues of race, gender, homophobia, rape and misogyny. She is the author of "Creating a Sacred Space of Our Own," in Just Sex: Students Rewrite the Rules on Sex, Violence, Equality & Activism, (2000) and other essays. Simmons co-produced two television programs for a Philadelphia PBS affiliate, "Out of the Closet," voices from the sexual minority community in the Delaware Valley, and "ON! Sistahs," a show about women of African descent in the Americas. Simmons has screened her work and lectured on the intersections of oppressions on black women's lives in Spain, Mexico, the Republic of South Africa, England, Canada, The Netherlands, and at conferences, film festivals and colleges across the United States.
This event is sponsored by the Irwin Chair in Women's Studies and the Women's Studies department, with additional support from the Africana studies department, Faculty for Women's Concerns, Kirkland Endowment Advisory Committee, and the Kirkland Project. For more information, contact the women's studies department at 315-859-4282.
