The New Black: FAMS Visiting Filmmakers Series at George Mason University 11/7 JCC 4:30pm

The New Black: FAMS Visiting Filmmakers Series at George Mason University 11/7 JCC 4:30pm

The New Black tells the story of how the African-American community is grappling with gay rights in light of the current marriage equality movement and the ongoing struggle for civil rights.

The film documents activists, families and clergy on both sides of the campaign to legalize gay marriage. As it looks at homophobia in the black community’s institutional pillar, the black church, the film reveals the Christian right's exploitation of this issue in order to pursue an anti-gay political agenda. The New Black takes viewers into the pews and onto the streets in order to show the historic fight to win marriage equality in Maryland.

Yoruba Richen is documentary filmmaker who has directed and produced films in the United States, Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia. Her award-winning film, Promised Land, premiered at the Full Frame Documentary Festival and has screened at numerous festivals around the world. It received a Diverse Voices Co-Production fund award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and won the Fledgling Fund Award for Social Issue Documentary.

Yoruba has produced for the investigative unit of ABC News and the independent news program Democracy Now. In 2007, she won a Fulbright Award in filmmaking and traveled to Salvador, Brazil, where she began production on Sisters of the Good Death, a documentary about the oldest African women’s association in the Americas and the annual festival they hold celebrating the end of slavery. In 2012, Yoruba won the Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Award and became a Guggenheim fellow. She is a graduate of Brown University and teaches Documentary film at CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism. 

The New Black offical site

The New Black trailer

The Q&A will be moderated by Film & Video Studies director Giovanna Chesler.

This event is free and open to the public. 

The New Black and Yoruba Richen at George Mason University is sponsored by the Film & Media Studies Program, and cosponsored by African & African American Studies, Cultural Studies, English, Film & Video Studies, the Honors College, the LGBTQ Resources Program, Sociology & Anthropology, University Life, and Women & Gender Studies.