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film
Freedom Dreaming and Worldmaking: Tourmaline and Hope Dector on Marsha P. Johnson’s Inspiring Life
Oct 20, 2025
Award-winning artist, filmmaker, writer, and activist Tourmaline has spent over two decades lovingly researching and preserving Marsha P. Johnson’s life. In two books published this past spring—MARSHA: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson, the first comprehensive biography of Johnson, and a children’s book, One Day in June—Tourmaline provides a richly textured story of […]
Read MoreSaul Williams on Black Experimentation, Fugitive Pedagogies, and the Art of Resistance
Saul Williams and Shana L. Redmond
Poet, musician, filmmaker, actor and intellectual Saul Williams discusses the relationships between aesthetic forms and political education in conversation with Dr. Shana Redmond, Director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference. Reflecting on practices of Black experimentation—in language, music, and film—this dialogue explores the various sites of enclosure and foreclosure, from the nation state to the university, that bear upon the present and what practices are necessary to enact more just futures.
Read MoreMilisuthando: Intimacy, Race, and Belonging in Apartheid South Africa
Milisuthando Bongela and Amelia Herbert
MILISUTHANDO is a deeply intimate portrait of filmmaker, writer and poet Milisuthando Bongela’s youth in South Africa. The self-titled documentary explores love, friendship and belonging in a South Africa stratified by racism, proving that only if we understand its tentacles, can we begin to extricate ourselves from its clutches.
Read MoreWe Will Not Be Erased: Queer Archives, Trans Histories
Steven Watson and Tourmaline
For over forty years, cultural historian Steven Watson has documented the stories and artwork at the leading edge of artistic and cultural movements, including the movement for queer and trans liberation. Working in collaboration with filmmaker William Markarian-Martin, Steven recently launched Artifacts, making his collection of rare, firsthand accounts from pioneers such as Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Holly Woodlawn, and many others accessible to students, researchers, and anyone interested in connecting to queer and trans history. Watson’s archival collection foregrounds the importance of engaging with and animating trans and queer histories in order to combat the present-day erasure of trans lives.
Read MoreTrans*Revolutions Virtual Symposium
Elliot Montague, Emma Frankland, Texas Isaiah, Tourmaline, and Vick Quezada
#TransRevolutions Live captioning is available here. During the event, you can send questions for the Q&A by emailing bcrw@barnard.edu or via Twitter @bcrwtweets #TransRevolutions Trans*Revolutions is a virtual symposium featuring artist-activists whose work is inspired by and engaged in imagining trans* and genderqueer histories, performances, identities, and aesthetics. Elliot Montague (film), Emma Frankland (performance), Texas Isaiah […]
Read MoreDreams are Colder than Death: Screening & Talk with Arthur Jafa
Featuring Arthur Jafa, Christina Sharpe, Tourmaline, and Tavia Nyong'o.
Read MoreDreams are Colder than Death: Screening & Talk with Arthur Jafa
Arthur Jafa, Christina Sharpe, Tourmaline & Tavia Nyong'o
Join us for a screening and discussion with acclaimed filmmaker and cinematographer Arthur Jafa. Jafa’s work in TNEG Film Studio (the studio he runs together with co-creators Elissa Blount Moorhead and Malik Sayeed) seeks to create a black cinema that equals the “power, beauty and alienation of black music.” Against the contemporary backdrop of the […]
Read MoreTourmaline: Making a Way Out of No Way
Keynote address at The Scholar & Feminist Conference 41: Sustainabilities.
Read MoreBirthright Crisis: The Power and Paradoxes of Media Advocacy
Miriam Neptune
After a September 2013 court ruling stripped citizenship from thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent, long-term efforts to critique human rights conditions in the Dominican Republic gained traction while existing tensions between Dominican and Haitian diaspora groups also increased. Miriam Neptune will discuss the experience of screening her award-winning documentary Birthright Crisis as both an […]
Read MoreWildness: Discussion with the Filmmakers
Discussion featuring Wu Tsang and Roya Rastegar. Moderated by Janet Jakobsen
Read More“The Lady with the Whip”: Gendered Violence and Social Death in Manderlay and Django Unchained
Frank Wilderson
How do we conceptualize gender, violence and political organizing in Black life? What does it mean to understand slavery as an ongoing relationship? Join us for a talk by Frank Wilderson, Professor of African American Studies and Drama (UC-Irvine) and award-winning author of Incognegro and Red White and Black. Esther Armah (political commentator, playwright, and […]
Read MoreUtopia
LIVE-TWEETING DESCRIPTION PROGRAM VIDEOS & MORE Live-Tweeting Tweets about “#sfutopia” Participant Twitter Handles Gwendolyn Beetham @gwendolynb K. Tempest Bradford @tinytempest Melanie Cervantes @Meloniousfunk Francesca Coppa @fcoppa Design for America – Lulu Mickelson, Andrew Demas, Kendall Herman @DFAColumbia Cassie Flynn @cassie_flynn Amber Hollibaugh – Queers for Economic Justice @Q4EJ Valery Jean @Valery_Jean Ileana Jiménez @feministteacher Elisa […]
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