Shorts Program 2

Through metaphorical and material rituals—in the woods, anointed with water, on the front lines, or in the downpour of rain—these short films meditate on the experience of contemporary Black womanhood.

I Am Somebody (1970)
Dir. Madeline Anderson
With Ralph Abernathy, Coretta Scott King, Andrew Young, Claire Brown
30min; Digital

In 1969, 400 poorly paid Black women went on strike to demand union recognition and a wage increase at their Charleston hospital, only to find themselves in a heated confrontation with the National Guard. Director Madeline Anderson participated in this strike, alongside Coretta Scott King, Ralph Abernathy, and Andrew Young, and documented the courage of the nurses and strikers in what is likely the first televised civil rights documentary directed by a woman of color.

Rain (Nyesha) (1978)
Dir. Melvonna Ballenger
With Evlynne Braithwaite, Bernard Nicolas, Ijeoma Iloputaife
15min; Digital

A lyrical film essay accompanied by John Coltrane’s “After the Rain,” Ballenger’s Rain (Nyesha) traces a female typist’s empowerment in a meditation on storms as not foreboding, but a chance to instead recollect.

Venus of Ossabaw (2026)
Dir. Allison Janae Hamilton
18min; Digital

A young woman, newly-escaped from Georgia’s Ossabaw Island, navigates the swamps of Spanish East Florida on the way to a free life in Catholic St. Augustine when she discovers that, in order to survive, she must both battle and befriend a volatile landscape.

Water Ritual #1: An Urban Rite of Purification (1979)
Dir. Barbara McCullough
With Yolanda Vidato
6min; Digital

McCullough’s experimental short, made in collaboration with performer Yolanda Vidato, examines Black women’s struggle for metaphorical and material space through the symbolic act of purification.