Talks | Film

Darnell L. Moore is the author of No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America. He is currently the head of strategy and programs at Breakthrough US and was formerly editor-at-large at CASSIUS (an iOne digital platform) and senior editor at Mic. He is co-managing editor at The Feminist Wire and an editor of the Feminist Wire Books, a series of the University of Arizona Press. He is also a writer-in-residence at the Center on African American Religion, Sexual Politics, and Social Justice at Columbia University.

Michelle Parkerson is a writer, lecturer, and filmmaker based in Washington, DC. She has documented the lives of LGBTQ icon Audre Lorde, jazz innovator Betty Carter, acappella activists Sweet Honey in the Rock, and legendary male impersonator Storme’ DeLarverie. Her work has screened at Sundance Film Festival, the Berlin Film Festival, and AFI Fest.

Timothy DuWhite is a Brooklyn-based writer, poet, playwright, and performance artist who addresses issues like HIV, racism, and queerness in his work. He has performed at the Apollo Theater, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Bowery Poetry Club, Dixon Place, La Mama, and Issue Project Room, and his writing can be found in The Rumpus, The Root, Black Youth Project, The Grio, and elsewhere. He is the program director at New York Writers Coalition and has facilitated workshops at Urban Word, the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project, Housing Works, and Rikers Island. He is currently at work on a one-man play at Dixon Place, where he is in residence.

Ni’Ja Whitson is a “Bessie” Award winning, gender nonconforming/astral transmogrifying interdisciplinary artist and writer. Through a critical intersection of gender, sexuality, race, and spirit, they engage a nexus of transdisciplinary and African diasporic performance practices in sacred and conceptual performance. Whitson created a live adaption of Marlon Riggs' Tongues Untied centralizing the collaborative work of Hemphill and Riggs, premiering at American Realness to sold out audiences.

Having grappled with the stereotypes imposed upon black people by white America, Marlon Riggs turns his attention to another fraught issue: the definitions of “blackness” that African-Americans impose on each other. Black Is...Black Ain't weaves together poetry, commentary from scholars like Angela Davis and bell hooks, and a direct address from Riggs—filmed from his hospital bed, dying of AIDS—offering a moving call for communion among black Americans.

“Pervert the language.” Kinetically edited in the style of a music video, this hip-hop-inflected experimental work issues a proud statement of black gay love and humanity.

Composer Bryce Dessner—with Korde Arrington Tuttle and Kaneza Schaal—considers the work of controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe with a new score performed by vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth.