Fannie's Film
Black History Month
•
14m
Directed by Fronza Woods • Documentary • 1981 • 15 minutes
In FANNIE'S FILM, a 65-year-old cleaning woman for a professional dancers' exercise studio performs her job while telling us in voiceover about her life, hopes, goals, and feelings. A challenge to mainstream media's ongoing stereotypes of women of color who earn their living as domestic workers, this seemingly simple documentary achieves a quiet revolution: the expressive portrait of a fully realized individual. Part of the mediamaking movement that first gave centrality to the voices and experiences of African American women during the late seventies and early eighties.
"Very simply, one of the best short films that I’ve ever seen.” —Richard Brody, The New Yorker
Up Next in Black History Month
-
Killing Time
Directed by Fronza Woods • Drama • 1979 • 9 minutes
KILLING TIME, an offbeat, wryly humorous look at the dilemma of a would-be suicide unable to find the right outfit to die in, examines the personal habits, socialization, and complexities of life that keep us going. Part of the mediamaking move...
-
An Apollo Legend
Directed by Brian Storm • Documentary • 2008 • 18 minutes
Decades before American Idol and America's Got Talent captured the attention of millons on TV, the world renowned Apollo Theater in Harlem started hosting its popular Amateur Night, which launched the careers of Ella Fitzgerald, James Bro...
-
A Reckoning in Boston
Directed by James Rutenbeck • Documentary • 2022 • 84 minutes
Kafi Dixon and Carl Chandler enrolled in a rigorous night course in the humanities at a community center in their Boston neighborhood of Dorchester.
Kafi, 44, sharp, witty and restless, dropped out of school at 15. She had her first ...