A Black Cinema collection of short films from Black Women Filmmakers. 

A Minor Altercation directed by Jackie Shearer, 1977 (30 mins)

A fight between an African American and a white schoolgirl in Boston is explored in all its complexity in this fact-based drama from one of the producers of EYES ON THE PRIZE.

Jacqueline (Jackie) Shearer was an independent producer and director of documentary films about African Americans. Shearer was born in Boston and graduated from Brandeis University. Her films included “A Minor Altercation” (1978), and “The Keys to the Kingdom” and “The Promised Land” (1989), two segments of the Emmy Award-winning “Eyes on the Prize” (1991), a documentary series about the civil rights movement that aired on public television.

Your Children Come Back to You directed by Allie Sharon Larkin, 1979 (27 mins)

YOUR CHILDREN COME BACK TO YOU is a contemporary allegory about values and assimilation. The film literalizes the meaning of a “mother country” by means of the story of a young girl, Tovi, torn between two surrogate mothers: one comfortably bourgeois, the other nationalist.

Alile Sharon Larkin is an acclaimed L.A. Rebellion filmmaker and multicultural artist-educator. Born in 1953 in Chicago, Larkin grew up in ethnically diverse neighborhoods in Altadena and Pasadena, California. She received her B.A. in Creative Writing (Humanities) from USC in 1975 where she won that year’s Moses Award in Creative Writing. Larkin earned her M.F.A. in Film and Television Production from UCLA and a teaching credential from CSULA, where she also began an M.A. in Storytelling.

Killing Time/Fannies Film two shorts directed by Fronza Woods, 1979 (15 mins)

Part of the mediamaking movement that first gave centrality to the voices and experiences of African American women during the late Seventies and early Eighties, these two re-releases are no less groundbreaking today. KILLING TIME, an offbeat, wryly humorous look at the dilemma of a would-be suicide unable to find the right outfit to die in, examines the personal habits, socialization, and complexities of life that keep us going. In FANNIE’S FILM, a 65-year-old cleaning woman for a professional dancers’ exercise studio performs her job while telling us in voiceover about her life, hopes, goals, and feelings. A challenge to mainstream media’s ongoing stereotypes of women of color who earn their living as domestic workers, this seemingly simple documentary achieves a quiet revolution: the expressive portrait of a fully realized individual.

Fronza Woods was born, raised and educated in Detroit, spent most of her active professional years in Manhattan and is maturing, as creatively as possible, in the southwest of France. A writer-filmmaker in her own right, she has worked as camerawoman on numerous independent films, was assistant sound engineer on John Sayles’ feature “The Brother from Another Planet”, been a script reader for HBO, and taught basic filmmaking at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, where she also created and curated an outreach film program for the city’s black community.

All ticket-holders 12 years of age and older are required to be fully vaccinated OR to provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test administered at an official testing facility within 48 hours of date and showtime. In accordance with our current policy and per the City of Winston-Salem mandate, masks are required for all patrons when not actively eating or drinking at their seat.

Black voices, Women Filmmakers, Indie, Drama