Lip A film collaboration between Tracey Moffatt and Gary Hillberg 1999, 10 minutes, Color

It is Hollywood’s favorite role for black women: the maid. Sassy or sweet, snickeringly attentive or flippantly dismissive, the performers who play them steal every scene they are in, and Tracy Moffatt’s entertaining video collage reveals the narrow margin Hollywood has allowed black actresses to shine in. But shine they do. Giving lip is proven an art form in these scenes from 1930’s cinema to present-day movies featuring a remarkable roster of undervalued actresses and their more celebrated white costars. Moffatt and Hillberg’s rough, no-budget assembly effectively highlights with familiarity and humor the disturbing realization of how black characters and white characters still interact on screen, under Hollywood’s eternally backwards eye.

via WOMEN MAKE MOVIES | Lip

Tracey Moffatt (by BrooklynMuseum)

“I didn’t even stop to wait for the right to make art, I just did it”

“…we know most Black actresses were forced to play the maid. And what I’m trying to say with ‘Lip’ is that, yes, unfortunately a lot of these brilliant women actresses were forced to play the maid, but what a good job they did.”

Moffat usually really avoids attempts to label her work by it’s recurring themes of race and sexual politics, but she does half seriously answer questions here about feminism, Hollywood, race and her classic short film Lip. Plus she cites beating up her brother as a feminist act.

thegang:

Each year, QUEER WOMEN OF COLOR MEDIA ARTS PROJECT offers 4 free Filmmaking Workshops through our award-winning Training Program. Our workshops serve teenagers to elders. 

To better serve our community, QWOCMAP has conducted Training Program workshops specifically for youth (ages 18 to 25), queer folks of color who are butch/genderqueer/transgender, Asian/Pacific Islander, Black/African descent, Chicanas/Latinas, and Native American/Indigenous/First Nations queer women. We also offered a workshop focused on queer immigration. We do this to deepen the dialogue and address issues specific to each community’s needs. 

Intermediate workshops (and soon, advanced workshops) are available to participants who have completed a film through our QWOCMAP introductory workshop. Information regarding intermediate workshops will be announced through our filmmaker listserve and on this page when available. Please contact TRAINING@qwocmap.org with questions or inquiries. 

Jump to QWOCMAP FREE Video WORKSHOP FOR YOUTH 2012 Jump to QWOCMAP FREE VIDEO WORKSHOP 2012

(via etiquette-etc)

thegang:

SHAKEDOWN is the story of a black lesbian strip club in Los Angeles. The film is anchored in the stories of three women: Ronnie Ron, the creator and emcee of “Shakedown, a large butch/stud lesbian and former Jehovah’s Witness; Egypt, a single mother, beauty pageant fanatic, and dedicated self - (re)inventor; and Jazmyne, the complicated and sometimes conflicted “Queen” of Shakedown. We go through the process of their labor with them and record what they do, and how they feel about what they are doing.”

(via femmefluff:polypeopleofcolor)

More from the director Leilah Weinraub’s statement and kickstarter fundraising page [which only has a few more days to go, if you can support it!]

The films structure employs the cycle of money exchanged and passed through the world as a metaphor for energy; from costume maker to security guard to patrons to the dancer’s children. SHAKEDOWN emphasizes the symbiotic nature of how things work in a system.

SHAKEDOWN is a feature-length video documentary about women’s work, and how work forms identity. Its also a history of Los Angeles, or a history of Los Angeles’ black lesbian nightclub scene, and its genesis. It’s a history told in opposition to other histories of black performance art. It is important to me to show that this world / structure was created, planned and built.

(via sexartandpolitics)

so-treu:

dominickbrady:

I want to see this.  Damn you.

kameelahwrites:

Just bought a ticket :)

Black Venus : Welcome to the 48th New York Film Festival

In his unforgettable telling of the short, deplorable existence of the “Hottentot Venus”—née Saartjie Baartman, a slave from Cape Town who was exhibited as a freak-show attraction in early 19th-century Europe—Abdellatif Kechiche (The Secret of the Grain) delivers a riveting examination of racism.

Gawked at and groped in grimy carnivals in London and, later, high-society Parisian salons, Baartman soon becomes the object of prurient fascination of French scientists, obsessed with calibrating every part of her anatomy—particularly her enlarged buttocks and genitals. Though Baartman’s life was unspeakably grim, Yahima Torres’s remarkably complex portrayal of the title character reveals not just a mute symbol of victimhood but also a woman capable of fierce defiance. North American Premiere.

Abdellatif Kechiche, 2010, France, 159m

i hadn’t heard of it, but now it’s on my “hopefully i’ll have the opportunity to see it someday because i really want to” list.

Love Love Love Love Love « Kathleen’s blog

SHOTGUN SEAMSTRESS IS A ZINE BY AND FOR BLACK PUNKS,QUEERS, MISFITS, FEMINISTS, ARTISTS/MUSICIANS, WEIRDOS AND THE PEOPLE WHO SUPPORT THEM.

Read some great essays by the same author here

so-treu:

dtron:

Wanted by Ester Hernandez.

Ester Hernandez is a Latina artist based in the bay area and her pieces are collected by the likes of Alice Walker and Sandra Cisneros. This is her response to Arizona’s immigration bill.

Gallery : La Chica Boom

loveandzombies:

ambird:elephantinthepicture: insecurelobster: missquitecontrary:

Mary Sibande | M. Dash

“Inspired by the explorations of race, gender and sexuality in the work of American artists Kara Walker and Cindy Sherman, and London-based Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare, Mary cast her own body in fibreglass and silicone to create Sophie. She then painted her a ‘flat black,’ so that she stands out like a dark and static shadow … Sophie’s eyes are always closed as if in a ‘constant ecstasy of fantasy’ and it’s in her mind that her dress becomes a thing of voluminous Victorian splendour. ‘If she opened her eyes, it would be back to work – cleaning this, dusting that. Her dress would become an ordinary maid’s uniform,’ said Mary.”

cross post my tumblrs because it’s so good.

QWOCMAP :: Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project

“Festival Focus
Two-Spirits: Reclaiming Remembrance
Queer Native American, Indigenous & First Nations Women

The 6th annual QUEER WOMEN OF COLOR FILM FESTIVAL (QWOCFF) is a 3-day Film Festival, featuring 38 films in 4 screening programs,
the majority of which are brand-new QWOCMAP films!”

June 11-13, Brava Theater, San Francisco.

loveandzombies:

fuckyeahwomenwriters:

Leslie Marmon Silko

1948-

Leslie Marmon Silko is a Native American writer born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She grew up near the Laguna Pueblo Reservation, and her experience with the tribe had a large impact on her writing. While still in school Silko penned a short story titled The Man to Send Rain Clouds. This story brought her a lot of attention, and she was awarded the National Endowment for the Humanities Discovery Grant. Her first novel, Ceremony, was published in 1977 and quickly became a critical success. In 1981 she won the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant. She quit her job teaching to work on what would be her second novel. It would take her 10 years to complete.

Themes: Native American Experience, Women’s History, Nature, Race

Novels

• Ceremony
• Almanac of the Dead
• Gardens in the Dunes

Poetry and Short Story Collections

• Love Poem and Slim Canyon
• Rain
• Sacred Water: Narratives and Pictures
• Yellow Woman
• Storyteller
• Western Stories
• Laguna Women: Poems

In case you are not already following fuckyeahwomenwriters, it is up & running! i have not been able to post as often as I would like, but I promise I am working on it =)

thegang:

“Contemporary artist Titus Kaphar makes oil-on-canvas copies of European and American portrait paintings from the 18th and 19th centuries and reconfigures them in strategic ways to create a dialogue about race, art and representation. His work is at once beautiful and halting as he dances between fictional narrative and history.”

These really make you look twice. They’re both eerie and thoughtful with a strong sense of history.

source

I absolutely LOVE the way he is re-presenting visual history. so dope.

(via seaponies:tobia:gallerygirl)