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 Lives
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Chisholm '72: Unbought & Unbossed
Directed by Shola Lynch • Documentary • With Shirley Chisholm, Amiri Baraka, Octavia Butler, Bobby Seale • 2004 • 77 minutes
Recalling a watershed event in US politics, this compelling documentary takes an in-depth look at the 1972 presidential campaign of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman...
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Portrait of Jason
Directed by Shirley Clarke • Documentary • 1967 • 108 minutes
On the night of December 2, 1966, Clarke and a tiny crew convened in her apartment at the Hotel Chelsea to make a film. There, for twelve straight hours they filmed the one-and-only Jason Holliday as he spun tales, sang, donned costum...
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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...
