Yvonne Welbon of The New Black - East Tennessee State University, Indie Memphis, and Auburn University

From producer Yvonne Welbon of The New Black:

Working with a small team I oversee The New Black’s Empowering Equality outreach and engagement campaign focused primarily on LGBT, faith and African-American communities. In collaboration with our partner organizations (e.g., Human Rights Campaign, ACLU, Gay-Straight Alliance Network), our national campaign launched in 2013 with a number of initiatives and piloted a series of activities geared toward fostering dialogue, bridge-building and inspiring action. We have focused on three key areas as part of an overarching public education effort. They included 1) Faithbased Initiatives; 2) Institutional and Organizational Development; and 3) Grassroots Organizing encompassing political and legislative advocacy and increasing media visibility. The goals of Southern Circuit Tour align with many of our goals, including our strong desire to reach our goals with communities in the South.

East Tennessee State University 

The first stop on my tour was the Mary B. Martin School of the Arts at East Tennessee State University (ETSU). With The New Black Empowering Equality campaign, our goal is to support the development of diversity and inclusion practices within colleges, universities, corporations, and nonprofit organizations committed to developing and sustaining diverse, inclusive environments.

Working with the fabulous ETSU team that included Associate Dean Anita DeAngelis, Assistant Director Heidi Ehle and RTVF Director Shara Lange I experienced a full day of activities that included a classroom visit, small group critiques, a faculty/staff dinner, the screening of the film and a reception. The team at ETSU garnered quite a bit of press for the event. The film screening was written about in East Tennessean, A! Magazine, The Kingsport Times-News, and Johnson
City Press.

Yvonne Welbon presenting a case study of The New Black to Professor Tammy Hayes RTVF Writing Class. 

Professor Tammy Hayes RTVF Writing Class

Professor Shara Lange arranged a small group critique session with students

Post screening Q & A

The Reception

Indie Memphis

The New Black screened at Malco Studio on the Square in Memphis. The screening attracted a crowd that included members of OutLaw 901, the #1 LGBT Guide to Memphis TN. Members from Cathedral of Praise Church of Memphis decided to bring their Wednesday night Bible Study to the screening. Overall the audience mix helped to create an amazing post screening discussion moderated by Whitney, the Founder of OutLaw 901.

New Black Producer, Yvonne Welbon with members of Cathedral of Praise Church of Memphis

Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University 

My last stop on the Southern Circuit Tour was the beautiful Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University. The screening was open to the public and included students and community members. The audience Q& A focused on topics that ranged from Alabama’s stance on Marriage Equality to the many issues addressed in the film. One young woman in the audience said that the film allowed her to think deeply about the issues in the film and had moved her to shift her position to one that was more open to acceptance. The Q& A moved from the theater to the atrium where we

enjoyed live jazz , good food and great conversation.

Producer, Yvonne Welbon; Museum Curator of Education, Scott Bishop; Audience members Kirk Swiss and Virginia E. O'Leary, Ph.D.; Professor Emerita, Auburn University

Yoruba Richen of The New Black - Oxford College, Presbyterian College, and Creative City Collaborative

From filmmaker Yoruba Richen of The New Black:

Creative City Collaborative Screening

I was super excited to hit the south with my documentary The New Black. Though we have had screenings in the region, this would be the first time I was able to be there and participate in Q and As. The film tackles some pretty hot button issues (race, sexuality, religion) and I was very curious to see how folks in the south would engage with it.

The first stop was Oxford College it Georgia. It was probably the coldest day of the year - but that didn't prevent a packed house for the screening, followed by a really good discussion afterward. The next morning I had breakfast with the Black Student Association and we talked about many issues that the film brought up, including the intersection of being black and LGBTQ, to need for more African-American filmmakers out there telling our own stories, from our own perspectives. I then got on the road and drove to Clinton SC. It was a beautiful drive through the wintry back roads, and I enjoyed the peacefulness and quiet solitude - very different from my New York City life. In Clinton, I screened at Presbyterian College and again the cold weather didn't stop folks from coming out. It was great talking with the students about the role of religion in their lives and how that affected their views on marriage equality. What is interesting is how much folks are engaging in this issue all around the country and how the conversations are similar despite the differences in policy in each state. Next was Creative City Collaborative in Pompano Beach FL. The space was beautiful and the crowd energetic. It was amazing timing to be screening in the south as Alabama was grappling with the recent court order to allow same-sex marriage. This made for rich discussions in each of the venues and I'm so thankful that I got this opportunity 

February's Films and Filmmakers

It's February and that means Southern Circuit is gearing up for the second half of it's season! This month we welcome Brothers Hypnotic, Private Violence, The New Black, and Remote Area Medical. Read on to find out more about these films and check out the entire lineup for the 2014-2015 Southern Circuit Film Schedule.

---

Reuben Atlas is an award-winning filmmaker and non-practicing lawyer. He premiered Brothers Hypnotic at the SXSW Film Festival in 2013 and is currently making a Sundance Institute and IDA-supported film about the controversial community group, ACORN, as well as a film about the esoteric world of fine wine. Previously, he worked at a maximum-security prison, a music law firm, and Legal Aid.

For the eight young men in the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, brotherhood is literal: they’re all sons of anti-establishment jazz legend Phil Cohran. Cohran and their mothers raised them together on Chicago’s South Side on a strict diet of jazz, funk and Black Consciousness. Family band practice began at 6 AM. Now grown, Brothers Hypnotic shows as the brothers try to make it - while playing in the streets of New York, collaborating with Mos Def, or wowing at a jazz festival - they find the values their father bred into them tested.

Schedule:

Feb 08: Winder Cultural Arts Center, Winder, GA
Feb 10: Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, GA
Feb 11: Clemson University, Clemson, SC
Feb 12: Wallace State Community College, Hanceville, AL

---

Kit Gruelle is a survivor of domestic violence and has worked as a battered women’s advocate and community educator for over 25 years. She is dedicated to challenging the stereotypes and prevailing belief systems about violence against women and children, and the prevalence of out-of-date responses that do little to change the fundamental dynamics of domestic violence.

Cynthia Hill is a producer and director whose credits include Tobacco Money Feeds My Family, The Guestworker, February One, and A Chef’s Life. Hill’s work has appeared on PBS and the Sundance Channel. She is the co-founder of the Southern Documentary Fund. Hill is from Pink Hill, NC and resides in Durham.

Private Violence is a feature-length documentary film and audience engagement campaign exploring a simple, but deeply disturbing, fact of American life: the most dangerous place for a woman in America is her own home. Every day in the United States, at least four women are murdered by abusive (and often ex-) partners. The knee-jerk response is to ask, “Why doesn’t she just leave?” Private Violence shatters the brutality of this logic. Through the eyes of two survivors, filmgoers witness the complicated and complex realities of intimate partner violence.

Schedule:

Feb 12: Madison-Morgan Cultural Center, Madison, GA
Feb 13: City of Hapeville, Hapeville, GA
Feb 14: The Tennessee Valley Art Association/Ritz Theatre, Sheffield, AL
Feb 17: Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC
Feb 19: Robinson Film Center, Shreveport, LA
Feb 20: Union College, Barbourville, KY

---

Yoruba Richen is a documentary filmmaker who has directed and
produced films in the United States and abroad including Africa, South America and Southeast Asia. Richen has been an associate producer for the investigative unit of ABC News, as well as a producer for Democracy Now. Richen won the Creative Promise Award at Tribeca All Access and was a Sundance Institute’s Producers’ Fellow. She is a 2014 featured TED Speaker and a Guggenheim Fellow. Richen is Director of the Documentary Program at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

The New Black tells the story of an African-American community grappling with gay rights in light of the recent gay marriage movement and fights over civil rights. The film documents activists, families and clergy on both sides of the campaigning to legalize gay marriage and examines homophobia in the black community’s institutional pillar—the black church. It tells the story of the historic fight to win marriage equality in Maryland and charts the evolution of this divisive issue within the black community.

Schedule:

Feb 18: Oxford College of Emory University, Oxford, GA
Feb 19: Presbyterian College, Clinton, SC
Feb 21: Creative City Collaborative, Pompano Beach, FL
Feb 23: East Tennessee State University, Mary B. Martin School of the Arts, Johnson City, TN
Feb 25: Indie Memphis, Memphis, TN
Feb 26: Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts, Auburn University, Auburn, AL

---

Farihah Zaman is a Brooklyn-based journalist, producer, and programmer. Her diverse background in the film industry includes programming and serving on the Advisory Board of the Film South Asia documentary film festival, working as the Acquisitions Manager at Magnolia Pictures, and working as the Program Manager of The Flaherty, organizing their historic, contentious annual film seminar and launching a monthly screening series at Anthology Film Archives. She is currently a staff writer at the film journal Reverse Shot, blogs for the Huffington Post, and has produced such projects as the trailer for the 2010 New York Film Festival. Her first feature film is Remote Area Medical and this was followed by the short Kombit (2014 Sundance Film Festival) and second feature This Time Next Year (2014 Tribeca Film Festival).

Jeff Reichert’s first feature film, Gerrymandering, premiered at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival where it was named one of the best of the festival by New York Magazine. His second feature film, Remote Area Medical, had its world premiere at the 2013 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and has won numerous awards and screened at festivals across the U.S. It is slated for theatrical release in Fall of 2014. His short, Kombit premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, and he recently premiered his third feature, This Time Next Year at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival. He is the co-editor of the popular online journal Reverse Shot.

During the U.S. debate about healthcare reform, the media—reporters and news crews and filmmakers—failed to put a human face on what it means to not have access to healthcare. Remote Area Medical fills that gap—it is a film about people, not policy. Focusing on a single three-day clinic held in the Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee, Remote Area Medical affords us an insider’s perspective on the ebb and flow of the event—from the tense 3:30 a.m. ticket distribution that determines who gets seen to the routine check-ups that take dramatic turns for the worse, to the risky means to which some patients resort for pain relief. We meet a doctor who also drives an 18-wheeler, a denture maker who moonlights as a jeweler, and the organization’s founder, Stan Brock, who first imagined Remote Area Medical while living as a cowboy in the Amazon rainforest, hundreds of miles from the nearest doctor. But it is the extraordinary stories of the patients, desperate for medical attention, that create a lasting impression about the state of modern health care in America.

Schedule:

Feb 11: Clemson University, Clemson, SC