Black Women Filmmakers: Yesterday and Today
Back in the day (as in decades ago), I dreamt of an acting career. Fate, however, had other plans. I became a journalist. Nonetheless, my passion for theater and film never waned; hence, I spend hours streaming movies and TV series, especially those directed (and oftentimes written and/or produced) by Black women.
Most notable among today’s cinematic geniuses are Ava Duvernay (When They See Us, Selma, 13, Queen Sugar, and Origin), Regina King (One Night in Miami, Watchmen, and If Beale Street Could Talk), and Shonda Rhimes (Bridgerton, Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder, and Grey’s Anatomy).
Interestingly enough, remarkable stories of Black women in film dates back to 1922. Theresa “Tressie” Souders, a domestic worker, directed A Woman’s Error, considered the first film directed by a Black woman in the United States. Souders also wrote and produced it.
According to writer and researcher Kyna Morgan, the Afro-American Film Exhibitors’ Company based in Kansas City, Missouri distributed her film. In January 1922, the entertainment magazine Billboard described the film as “a picture true to Negro life." Sadly, no copies of her film, or details of its plot, remain.
Film historians know much more about the multi-talented Maria P. Williams, who produced, distributed, and acted in the silent film, The Flames of Wrath, a crime drama involving a jewelry thief, an unscrupulous lawyer, and an amateur female sleuth. No copies of the 1923 film exist.
Williams, a schoolteacher, author, newspaper owner and social activist, died tragically in 1932 at the hands of an unknown assailant who shot her and left her body on the side of the road several miles from her home. Her murder remains unsolved.
Sisters in Cinema and Black Women Directors
Today, organizations such as Sisters in Cinema (SIC) and Black Women Directors (BWD), archive the work of Black women and nonbinary filmmakers and provide support and resources.
In 1991, while attending film school, Yvonne Welborn, founder and CEO of SIC, knew of only one African American filmmaker, Julie Dash, director of Daughters of the Dust, the first feature film directed by an African American woman to receive national theatrical distribution. Eager to discover other Black women filmmakers, in 1997 Welborn launched SIC, an online resource “for and about African American women filmmakers.”
SIC programs include a $5,000 Documentary Fellowship, The Sisters in Cinema Newsroom (for up to ten high school students from Chicago’s South Side who learn the basics of journalism, mass communications and media), and the Black Lesbian Writers’ Room, which “create(s) media that centers and explores the lives of queer Black lesbians and to develop a talented team of black women writers based in Chicago.”
In March 2024, Welborn opened The Sisters in Cinema Media Center in Chicago to provide programming and creative opportunities for Black women, girls, and gender nonconforming media makers on the South Side of Chicago.
Nine years ago, Chicagoan Danielle A. Scruggs, photographer, photo editor, and writer, created BWD, a digital library, with curated films by lesser known “Black women and non-binary filmmaker across the African Diaspora.”
The sole staffer for BWD, Scruggs boasts of curating “100 films and counting.” Her platform highlights film releases, screenings, and opportunities for filmmakers. The September newsletter, for example, featured submission requirements for The Sundance Feature Film Program’s Screenwriters Intensive, Comedy Fellowship, and Horror Fellowship.
Nace DeSanders and Monica Sorelle represent BWD filmmakers’ diverse cinematic visions.
In a recent YouTube interview, DeSanders, an experimental horror filmmaker living in Spain, says, “I feel that we’re in this beautiful horror Renaissance where we have elevated … all new ways to explore the horror genre.” Her full-length horror film, Dance with the Demon, is set for pre-production in March 2025.
Monica Sorelle is a Haitian American filmmaker and artist based in Miami. Her feature film, Mountains, debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City in June 2023, and was released in August 2024. The plot involves “a Haitian demolition worker … faced with the realities of redevelopment as he is tasked with dismantling his rapidly gentrifying neighborhood (IMDb).”
Michael Morano, critic for the arts fuse writes, “… the performances …are astounding, and Sorelle’s sure-handed direction heralds a new and formidable talent. The next mountain she climbs will likely be extraordinary.”
Historically, Black women and nonbinary filmmakers have faced numerous obstacles, including the hesitation of investors and production companies to back their films, a lack of representation both on-screen and behind the scenes, race and gender identity discrimination, confinement to specific genres and roles, and burnout fueled by discrimination and the pressure to succeed.
Nonetheless, the battle for funding, access, and non-stereotypical representations of Black women continues in an industry dominated by white male powerbrokers.
Despite these challenges, Ava Duvernay says: “As a Black woman filmmaker I feel that’s my job: visibility. And my preference within that job is Black subjectivity. Meaning I’m interested in the lives of Black folk as the subject. Not the predicate, not the tangent.”
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