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Presented as part of the Out of the Archive: Black Women Behind the Lens series.

Followed by a virtual Q&A with Cheryl Fabio-Bradford and Michelle Parkerson moderated by Tracie Morris.

This literary-focused program features powerful portraits and long lost gems, opening with a rarely screened short from Maya Angelou during her time at the AFI Directing Workshop for Women

All Day Long (1974, USA, 20 minutes) Dir. Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou (1951-2014) may be best known for her best-selling memoirs and poetry, but throughout her career, she also wanted to make movies. In 1988, she finally realized her dream of directing a feature film with Down in the Delta, yet that was not her first time in the director’s chair. In 1975, she made All Day Long as part of the American Film Institute’s inaugural Directing Workshop for Women. Shot over the course of one weekend with a tiny budget, All Day Long focuses on a day-in-the-life of Jimmy B, a ten-year-old Black boy who has recently moved from Mississippi to Los Angeles to live with his aunt. In this short, rarely screened film, Angelou interweaves the simple pleasure of everyday life with the painful reality of racialized trauma as well as the drama of a secret affair. For more information about All Day Long, see: https://asapjournal.com/16-3-all-day-long-hayley-omalley/.

Rainbow Black: Poet Sarah W. Fabio (1976, USA, 30 minutes) Dir. Cheryl Fabio-Bradford

With Rainbow Black: Poet Sarah W. Fabio, director Cheryl Fabio paints an image of poet, educator, and performer, Sarah W. Fabio, who was also Cheryl Fabio’s mother. This film was her master’s thesis project and it explores her mother’s artistic life and contributions to Black poetry and education. In the film, Sarah W. Fabio is interviewed in her apartment in Iowa. She is also seen in a studio, performing musical renditions of her poetry to the beat of a live band. Her poetry often times drew off of the “kaleidoscope,” her favorite image to utilize in her work. Cheryl Fabio also captures her mother’s role as an educator, showing her teaching a class at the University of Iowa on Black poetry. The film is a beautiful homage to Sarah W. Fabio, who made profound contributions to the Black arts.

Fierceness Served! The ENIKAlley Coffeehouse (2022, USA, 35 minutes) Dir. Michelle Parkerson

Michelle Parkerson is an independent filmmaker and writer from Washington, DC. Her career burgeoned in the late 1970s and early 80s, when she became a major contributor to a Black gay and lesbian renaissance of DC artists, musicians, activists, writers and performers. She has created both documentaries like Gotta Make This Journey: Sweet Honey in the Rock (1983) that follow the lives of an all-Black women’s acapella group and films like Odds and Ends (1993), a science fiction short about Black women warriors fighting racial and gender annihilation in the year 2096. Her documentary, Fierceness Served (2021), continues Parkerson’s legacy of combining filmmaking with activism as she revives the storied history of a DC Black LGBTQ cultural hub in the 1980s. For more about Fierceness Served!, see: https://www.thecoffeehousedc.com/.

Featured photo taken from Fierceness Served! The ENIKAlley Coffeehouse.