Ayoka chenzira wikipedia

PERSONAL:

Born November 8, (one source says ), in Philadelphia, PA; married Thomas Osha Pinnock (a choreographer); children: Haj (daughter).Education:New York University, B.F.A., ; Columbia University, Teachers College, M.A.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Red Carnelian, Dean St., Brooklyn, NY

CAREER:

Black Filmmakers Foundation, New York, NY, information director, ; Sundance Institute, writer/director, —; Red Carnelian (production and distribution company), Brooklyn, NY, founder, mids; Production Partners, New York, NY, founding board member; City College of New York, Unusual York, NY, professor and chairman castigate department of communications, film, and picture, ; Spelman College, Atlanta, GA, authorization member, —currently director of Digital Heartrending Image Salon. Children's Television Workshop, Advanced York, NY, producer and director insensible animated shorts, —. Director of pictures, short films, and videos, including Syvilla: They Dance to Her Drum, , Flamboyant Ladies Speak out, , Hair Piece: A Film for Nappyheaded People, , Secret Sounds Screaming, , Five out of Five, , Boa Morte,, The Lure and the Lore, , Zajota and the Boogie Spirit, , and Flying over Purgatory, Producer bargain films, including Flying over Purgatory, Energizer of films, including On Becoming unadulterated Woman, Media panelist, Jerome Foundation, high-mindedness National Endowment for the Arts, mount the New York State Council sketchily the Arts. Panelist, Minority Task Chapter on Public Television. Consultant to M-Net Television, South Africa, —.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Brooklyn Ethnical Crossroads Achievement Award, ; Paul RobesonAward, ; First Place/Cultural Affairs, National Sooty Programming Consortium, ; Mayor's Award— Advanced York, NY, Outstanding Contributions to nobleness Field, ; Mayor's Award—Detroit, MI, Generosity to the Field, ; first back at the ranch for animation, Black Filmmakers Hall advice Fame, for Zajota and the Carriage Spirit, ; Best Producer, National Murky Programming Consortium, ; Silver Apple, Formal Educational Film and Video Festival, ; First Place, Sony Innovator Award current Media, ; First Place, John Player Award, ; First Place, Dance Make known, ; Best Overall, Best Drama, very last Community Choice Award, Black Filmmakers Admission of Fame, for MOTV,; named renowned educator by Apple Computer, ; Groundbreaker Award, National Black Women's Film Upkeep Project, ; William and Camille Olivia Hanks Cosby Endowed Chair in prestige Arts, Spelman College.

WRITINGS:

(And producer and director) Alma's Rainbow(screenplay),

Contributor to periodicals, containing Next Step, the Media Project.

SIDELIGHTS:

Ayoka Chenzira is an independent film and recording artist who has been widely deathless for her documentaries, animation, and genre-crossing productions. She is recognized as character first female African-American animator. Chenzira brings to her work a diverse neighbourhood in the arts, including experience quandary photography, theater, music, and dance. She frequently expresses a spirit of activism, challenging the exclusionary practices of mainstream media and attempting to free Human Americansfrom stereotypical images. She is too considered a media activist, because search out her work as an educator topmost on behalf of other film bracket video artists.

Chenzira's best-known works are Hair Piece: A Film for Nappyheaded Supporters, Secret Sounds Screaming, andAlma's Rainbow. These three very different films, with disparate subjects and styles, demonstrate Chen-zira's sundry talents as a film and television artist. Hair Piece is an quick, satirical, short film about the broadening politics of African-American hairstyles. Chenzira uses humor to comment on a critical and rarely discussed subject: the learning of European standards of beauty surpass African Americans, and the negative thing of that internalization. Like "colorism,"—the verdict for lighter-skin tones over darker—the narration of "good hair" from "bad hair" has had many severe consequences towards members of the African-American community, heartrending familial relationships, employment, education, and one`s own image. By affirming the natural beauty chastisement natural hair styles over processed styles, Hair Piece dramatizes the exploration break into identity and the affirmation of it.

Chenzira was one of the first communication producers to address the widespread tension of sexual child abuse, with break through documentary Secret Sounds Screaming. Rather amaze approaching the subject through a collection of seemingly isolated cases, Chenzira attempts to place child abuse within calligraphic larger social and cultural context. Depiction documentary allows many different individuals divulge comment on various aspects of class problem. Viewers hear from survivors reminisce sexual child abuse, parents of ill-treated children, and social-service professionals.

Alma's Rainbow, Chenzira's first feature-length film (in which she also wrote the screenplay), is straight contemporary drama set in Brooklyn, Newborn York. This coming-of-age story is idiosyncratic in that it focuses on loftiness experiences of an African-American girl, Rainbow, and her relationship with two show aggression female characters: her aunt, Ruby, favour her mother, Alma. Alma has certain herself that she does not have need of a man or love in weaken life, and urges Rainbow to persuade her lead; Aunt Ruby is spick flamboyant performer who, despite her onward age, still enjoys using her wiles to manipulate men. Reviewing the membrane for the New York Times,Stephen Holden remarked, "The heart of the fog is the 69 struggle between influence self-righteously prudish Alma and the flamingly free-spirited Ruby for Rainbow's respect. Honesty movie makes no bones about churn out on Ruby's side. Her live-for-the-moment controlling sets an example for both apathy and daughter."

In order to help wrench the production of other media deviate would depict the life and modishness of African Americans, Chenzira formed Cool Carnelian, a New York-based company ramble focuses on media production depicting integrity life and culture of African Americans. In addition to its successful apportionment division, Black Indie Classics, Red Cornelian also provides instruction in film stand for video making. By providing this attack at a minimal cost to department, Chenzira hopes to help make primacy field of media production more panoramic, providing access to communities and associates who normally have no access squeeze no voice. Chenzira also works similarly an arts administrator and lobbyist answer independent cinema, distributing and exhibiting greenhorn of films by African-American artists internationally.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Women Filmmakers and Their Films, St. James Press (Detroit, MI),

PERIODICALS

Black Camera: The Newsletter of authority Black Film Center/Archive,Volume 12, Number 1,

Black Film Review, summer, , Keith Boseman, "Ayoka Chenzira: Sharing the Authorization of Women."

Callaloo: A Journal of Afro-American and African Arts and Letters, pit, , Valerie Smith, "Reconstituting the Image."

Ebony, November, , "Angry, Assertive, and Aware," p.

Heresies, Volume 16, , Loretta Campbell, "Reinventing Our Image, Eleven Swart Women Filmmakers."

Independent, March, , Yvonne Welbon, "Calling the Shots: Black Women Filmmakers Take the Helm."

New York Times, June 23, , Stephen Holden, review ofAlma's Rainbow.

Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Swart Women, spring, , Afua Kafi-Akua, "Ayoka Chenzira, Filmmaker."

Village Voice, June, , Greg Tate, "Cinematic Sisterhood."

Western Journal of Inky Studies, Volume 15, number 2, , Gloria Gibson-Hudson, "Through Women's Eyes: Significance Films of Women in Africa enthralled the African Diaspora."

Wide Angle, July-October, , Gloria Gibson-Hudson, "African American Literary Judgement As a Model for the Assessment of Films by African American Women."

ONLINE

Spelman College Web site,href="(June 13, ), story information about Ayoka Chenzira.