Community Screening: Black Feminist Film School Opening Weekend

Join Black Feminist Film School Summer Session for our opening screening at Center for Documentary Studies!  This screening is open to our entire community and will give you an opportunity to to meet the Black Feminist Film School 2014 Summer Fellows, see some of Black Feminist Film School's films in process and celebrate the legacy and livelihood of Black Feminist Film practices.  We look forward to your feedback on our films in process and your warm welcome of our Summer Fellows.

We will be screening:

No Legacy Let Go

No Legacy Let Go is an experimental short film that is part of the Mobile Homecoming experiential archive.  Based on our interview with Black lesbian elder Imani Rashid and our imaginings of a blues counterstory of queer Harlem, this film features original music and a reimagined and reclaimed history.  Versions of this film have been shown at the National Queer Arts Festival,  MIXMIX LGBTQ Film Festival in NYC and on multiple stops on the Mobile Homecoming national tour.     Our Durham community will get the chance to see the newest cut of the film and to offer feedback.

Combahee Pilgrimage

Combahee Pilgrimage is a documentary in process about the life-changing journey of 21 Black feminists to the Combahee River to commemorate both the 150th anniversary of Harriet Tubman's 1863 uprising during which at least 750 enslaved people in South Carolina burned down 35 plantation buildings, flooded the rice fields and stole themselves to freedom and the origin story of the 1974 founding of the Black lesbian socialist feminist Combahee River Collective.

Tradition Returned

Ile Ori: Tradition Returned (working title) is a film about a unique Ifa community in the United States. Building on African traditions in the new world diaspora and a sankofa (go back and fetch it; looking back to move forward) approach to Yoruba culture and spirituality, this inclusive community travels the ecstatic and challenging terrain of initiating new Priests into the mysteries, medicine and power of Orisha.

This film introduces some of the concepts of Ifa, tells the story of this Ile's first 10 years and tells the story of some of the challenges and stigmas that a same gender loving, transgender and racially inclusive Ifa community faces. Through it all, the power of this community to support one another through transformation is mesmerizing.
My People

My People is an audio performance piece based on a poetic protest narrative by Alexis Pauline Gumbs and a soundscape created by Julia Roxanne Wallace aka Sangodare.   The piece was created in response to the unjust arrest of two queer and trans activists of color by the NYPD and successfully helped to mobilize global support for their release.  The piece has been installed around the United States and as far away as Berlin.  This will be its Durham premiere.

See you there!