Alile Sharon Larkin
Directing
Biography
Alile Sharon Larkin is an artist-educator and award-winning independent film and video maker. Larkin was a public school teacher in Los Angeles for over 25 years. She taught at 32nd Street/USC Visual and Performing Arts Magnet School from 1993-2013. Her teaching experience ranges from pre-K to college and filmmaking is part of Larkin’s interdisciplinary curriculum. She has received 10 Video in the Classroom Awards for teacher-produced films, documenting students learning about textile arts, storytelling, yoga, jazz, women’s history, Kwanzaa and African-American dance. Her film, Your Children Come Back To You (1979), presents a child’s perspective on wealth and social inequality, and has screened throughout U.S. and Europe. A Different Image (1982), about an African-American woman contemplating self-identity, heritage and perception, received critical praise and earned her first prize from the Black American Cinema Society, won Best Production of 1981 from the Black Filmmaker Foundation, and was named runner-up for best short film at FILMEX. The screenplay of A Different Image was published in Screenplays of the African American Experience (Indiana University Press, 1991). Larkin’s critical essay, “Black Women Filmmakers Defining Ourselves,” appears in Female Spectators (Verso Editions, London). Larkin was honored to write the prologue for Charles Burnett: A Troublesome Filmmaker (Play-Doc Books, 2016). Her essay is titled: “Who Will Protect and Respect, Inspire and Nurture This Black Woman Filmmaker (For Charles and All the Brothers).” Larkin's production company Dreadlocks and the Three Bears Productions creates Afrocentric and global multimedia and arts experiences for children and families. Larkin recently resumed shooting Tie-Dye after 26 years, with a multigenerational crew including her son and granddaughter. Tie-dye features black children celebrating everyday life through global black music genres. The music is available on iTunes. Larkin hopes to complete the DVD for release in 2017.
Known For
An African American woman living away from her family in Los Angeles yearns to be recognized for more than her physical attributes. In cultivating the friendship of a male office mate, she aspires to a relationship where romance is not a factor, seeking someone who can "see her as she is," rather than see only what he wants to see. (UCLA Film & Television Archive)
A Different Image
Part of a multi-platform project highlighted by an hour long documentary about black filmmakers who worked and studied at UCLA between 1965 and the 1990s.
Spirits of Rebellion: Black Cinema at UCLA
A single mother ekes out a living from welfare check to welfare check, struggling to provide for her daughter.
Your Children Come Back to You
Interviews with single black parents.
The Single Parent Family: Images in Black
An early student work directed at UCLA by Alile Sharon Larkin and submitted as her "Project One." Larkin visualizes a mental ward as a possible equivalent to prison incarceration for women of color. –UCLA Film & Television Archive
The Kitchen
The story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears is told from an African American perspective in this short film written and produced by Alile Sharon Larkin.
Dreadlocks and the Three Big Bears
A jubilant affirmation of self-identity, Creating a Different Image is Alile Sharon Larkin in her own words defiantly declaring, "I am an artist." Learn more about the personal life and professional aspirations of the filmmaker behind Your Children Come Back to You (1979), A Different Image (1982), Dreadlocks and the Three Bears (1991) and many more. —Samuel B. Prime
Creating a Different Image: Portrait of Alile Sharon Larkin
The film uses interviews and photographs to tell the story of librarian and poet Fluci Moses, who is herself on-camera most of the time. She and other readers relate the story of black life in America through her and other readers' poems.