YSFF 2019: An Evening with the New Negress Film Society

The Yale Student Film Festival and the Yale Black Women’s Coalition present a program of short works by the New Negress Film Society, a collective of black women filmmakers whose priority is to create spaces for support, exhibition, and consciousness-raising. Womanist in content and experimental in form, these films run the gamut from documentary portraits (Ryann Holmes) to a mock cable-access children’s show starring a Grim Reaper host (Everybody Dies!).

The screening will take place on Friday, April 19, at 7 PM in the Whitney Humanities Center auditorium and will be followed by a discussion with NNFS collective members Stefani Saintonge and Yvonne Michelle Shirley.

This event is co-sponsored by the Dean’s Discretionary Fund for the Arts and Films at the Whitney. It is free and open to the public.

THE PROGRAM

Ryann Holmes (Chanelle Aponte Pearson, 2016)

Seventh Grade (Stefani Saintonge, 2014)

Pain Revisited (Dyani Douze, 2015)

Miasia: The Nature of Experience (Yvonne Michelle Shirley, 2017)

Giverny I (Ja’Tovia Gary, 2017)

Cakes Da Killa: NO HOMO (Ja’Tovia Gary, 2013)

Everybody Dies! (Frances Bodomo, 2016)

ABOUT THE NEW NEGRESS FILM SOCIETY

The New Negress Film Society, founded in 2013, is formed by Chanelle Aponte Pearson, Nuotama Bodomo, Dyani Douze, Ja’Tovia Gary, Stefani Saintonge and Yvonne Michelle Shirley. Their work has screened at Sundance Film Festival, SXSW Festival, International Film Festival at Rotterdam, Pan African Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Lincoln Center’s African Film Festival. Members of NNFS have worked on films with Spike Lee and the Oscar-nominated actress Quvenzhané Wallis. They have received prizes that include the Gotham Award and the ESSENCE Black Women in Hollywood Discovery Award. In March, NNFS collaborates with the Museum of Modern Art to organize the inaugural Black Women’s Film Conference.