Dr. Carter Woodson, a historian and author, started the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) in 1915. This is where National Black History Month got its start. Since then, February has become the month when we look back on Black history, culture, and contributions to our society. Of course, it’s important to keep in mind that respect and appreciation shouldn’t just happen during one month of the year.
Having said that, LGBTQ+ filmmakers are often overlooked or given less attention than they deserve. Being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender and black in this industry is harder than any of us can imagine. Still, the work of queer Black filmmakers has made great progress. Let’s look at some more filmmakers like these who deserve more of your attention and love.
Cheryl Dunye
Cheryl Dunye is a Liberian-American film director, producer, screenwriter, editor, and actress. She is known as the first out Black lesbian to ever direct a full-length movie. She got into making movies because she wanted her political work to have an effect. Dunye has done great work as a filmmaker in addition to teaching at a number of universities over the course of her life. Her early work was mostly videos about race, sexuality, family, relationships, being white, and many other things.
The Watermelon Woman, her first full-length movie, came out in 1996 and has become a cult film in the history of queer movies. In this fake documentary, a young Black lesbian tries to make a movie about a Black actress from the 1930s. Stranger Inside is another project of hers that looks at the lives of African-American lesbians in prison. Dunye bought the rights to the book The Gilda Stories and is also adapting the book Trumpet, which was written in Britain.
Dee Rees
Dee Rees, an American director and screenwriter, worked at a lot of different jobs before she realized that making movies was what she really wanted to do. Her first full-length movie, Pariah, which is a semi-biography, was mostly made while she was in college. It tells the story of a 17-year-old African-American lesbian who is trying to accept who she is. Then, Rees wrote and directed the HBO movie Bessie, which was about the American blues singer Bessie Smith and starred Queen Latifah.
Mudbound, a Netflix movie, made Rees the first Black woman ever to be nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars. It shows how racism and PTSD affect the lives of two WWII veterans after they come home. In sci-fi terms, her project Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams talks about the election of Trump. In the future, Rees is set to direct Masters of the Air for Apple TV+, as well as Porgy and Bess and The Kyd’s Exquisite Follies, both of which he will also write.
Dream Hampton
Dream Hampton is a dedicated member of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, and her films have the same spirit. She is best known for making the documentary series Surviving R. Kelly, which was about decades of sexual-abuse claims against the singer of the same name and led to him being charged with aggravated criminal sexual abuse. Her documentaries usually show wrongdoings, like the killing of Shelley Hilliard, a 19-year-old transgender woman, in Treasure and the shooting of Renisha Mcbride, who was asking for help, in We Demand Justice for Renisha Mcbride.
Jerrod Carmichael
Jerrod Carmichael is a well-known stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and filmmaker. He grew up poor, but that didn’t stop him from following his dream of becoming a stand-up comedian. His big break as an actor came in the movie Neighbors in 2014. This helped him get started as a comedian with shows like Love at the Store, 8, The Carmichael Show (2015–2017), and more. He was an executive producer for the Fox sitcom Rel and also directed Drew Michael’s stand-up comedy special Drew Michael. Carmichael even worked with Quentin Tarantino. Together, they wrote a movie script based on the crossover of Django and Zorro. Then, he made, directed, produced, and starred in the HBO documentaries Home Videos (2019) and Sermon on the Mount (2019), as well as the comedy thriller On the Count of Three (2019).
Justin Simien
Just like Rees, Justin Simien had many jobs before he directed his first movie. He got the idea for his first feature film, Dear White People (2006), from his time at Chapman University, which is mostly white. This film would later become a Netflix series. It also won him the 2014 Sundance Film Festival’s U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Talent. In 2020, he wrote, directed, and composed the songs for the horror comedy Bad Hair. Simien is currently working on several Disney projects. He is the showrunner for the new Disney+ series Lando and one of the directors for the movie version of The Haunted Mansion.
Marlon Riggs
Marlon Troy Riggs was a filmmaker, an educator, a poet, and a political activist. Most people know him for the documentaries he made about race and sexuality in the United States. Ethnic Notions looks at the racist ideas that are common in American culture about Black people. Riggs wasn’t afraid to try new things, like he did with Tongues Untied, which “shatters the nation’s brutalizing silence on matters of sexual and racial difference,” in the words of the book’s author. In Color Adjustment, the way African-Americans are shown on prime-time television is looked at. Also, Black is…Black Ain’t looks at different ways that African-Americans show who they are.
Rodney Evans
Rodney Evans is an American filmmaker and speaker who was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Queens. Brother to Brother, which came out in 2004, was his first full-length movie. It was about a young Black gay man who meets a Harlem Renaissance (an African-American revival of culture and intellect) survivor. He got known at places like the Sundance, Outfest, Roxbury, and Seattle Gay and Lesbian Film Festivals. Evans also made the short documentary drama Billy and Aaron, which is about jazz musician Billy Strayhorn as a gay man in the 1940s. In his second movie, The Happy Sad, two young couples push the limits of what it means to be gay.
Sophia Nahli Allison
Sophia Nahli Allison is just one of the many great documentary filmmakers on our list. Her 2019 documentary short A Love Song for Latasha was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short. It reimagines the life of Latasha Harlins, a Black girl who was shot by the owner of a convenience store in Los Angeles in 1991. The Rodney King riots are also mentioned in the story. Allison also worked with Octavia Butler on a group piece called Traveling the Interstitium, which was about Black artists who use WebXR to make Afrofuturist art. The director also has a series called Dreaming Gave Us Wings, which is still going on.
Yance Ford
Yance Ford made history when he was nominated for an Academy Award as the first openly transgender man. He started out making shows for PBS, but soon after that, he was named one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Cinema. Strong Island is a true-crime documentary that got him a Best Documentary Feature Oscar nomination. The murder of Ford’s brother in 1992 by a white chop shop mechanic who was not charged by an all-white jury is at the center of the documentary. We can’t wait to see what comes next for him.
Yoruba Richen
Most people know Yoruba Richen for the documentaries she has made. She made and directed the 2013 movie The New Black, which is about how African-Americans are dealing with the gay rights issue in the wake of the gay marriage movement. In her film Promised Land, she looked at South Africa’s efforts to bring people of different races together after the end of apartheid. In Sisters of the Good Death, Richen writes about the oldest group of African women in the Americas.
Yvonne Welbon
Last but not least, we have to talk about Yvonne Welbon, a filmmaker who lives in Chicago and works on her own. In her film Living with Pride: Ruth C. Ellis at 100, she tells the story of the oldest Black lesbian activist we know of. In Sisters in Cinema, a short film she made, she also looked at the history of African-American women film directors. She worked as a producer with both Dunye and Richen on Stranger Inside and The Ne
