Women Direct Festival Features Documentary Film

The Women Direct Festival and Symposium will bring filmmaker Stephanie Black to campus for a master class and a free public screening of her documentary Life and Debt. Her master class, which is limited to Ithaca College students, is entitled "Filming across Racial and National Differences: Practices, Politics, and Ethics." The screening will take place on Wednesday, March 27, at 7:00 p.m. in Park Hall Auditorium.

Life and Debt explores the harsh economic realities that workers in Jamaica must contend with in order to survive in the era of globalization. By combining traditional documentary techniques with a stylized narrative framework, Black shows how international lending, structural adjustment policies, and free trade affect the day-to-day reality of people trying to earn a living in a third world country. (More information)

Ten years in the making, Life and Debt was inspired in part by Black’s encounters in Jamaica during the making of her first documentary, H2 Worker. That film, which won in both best documentary and best cinematography categories at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival, shows the plight of thousands of temporary workers brought to Florida from the Caribbean each year to harvest sugar cane.

Black was also chief researcher for Incident at Oglala, a feature-length documentary on Leonard Peltier and the activities of the FBI on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation during the 1970s. In 1999 she directed and produced a 30-minute documentary, Making of Chant Down Babylon, a tribute to reggae singer Bob Marley.

In addition to her documentary work, Black has produced and directed short segments for Sesame Street, Nickelodeon’s U to U show, and PBS’s Zoom. She has also directed and produced music videos for such artists as Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers, Buju Banton, and Snow.

Begun 21 years ago as Women Direct and renamed the Women Direct Festival and Symposium in 2001, the series brings scholars and artists to Ithaca College to screen and discuss films, videos, and digital media works by women. Black’s public screenings are also part of the Cinema on the Edge program in the Roy H. Park School of Communications and the "Race and Its Meanings" series.

Her visit is sponsored by the Roy H. Park School of Communications; the Offices of the Provost and Multicultural Affairs; the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity; and several student organizations. Additional support is provided by the Central New York Programmers Group, in conjunction with the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Experimental Television Center.

For more information contact cinema and photography professor Patricia Zimmermann at 274-3431 or patty@ithaca.edu.