Directing
Meet Mama Gloria. Chicago’s Black transgender icon Gloria Allen, now in her 70s, blazed a trail for trans people like few others before her. Emerging from Chicago’s South Side drag ball culture in the 1960s, Gloria overcame traumatic violence to become a proud leader in her community. Most famously, she pioneered a charm school for young transgender people that served as inspiration for Chicago playwright Philip Dawkins’ hit play Charm. Luchina Fisher’s empathic and engaging documentary is not only a portrait of a groundbreaking legend, but also a celebration of unconditional love, the love Gloria received from her own mother and that she now gives to her chosen children.
Nothing symbolizes ‘making it in America’ quite like owning a home. Yet today, the racial gap in home ownership is widening, and those most impacted are women of color. Set in Detroit, “Locked out” takes us into the lives of courageous Black women who face evictions, predatory lenders and traditional banking, in a movement to battle housing injustice, so The American Dream may become a reality for all.
In the short documentary film TEAM DREAM we meet close friends Ann Smith and Madeline Murphy Rabb in their final days of preparation for the 2022 National Senior Games. While they train, we learn about their lives growing up amid segregation and stigma before breaking boundaries in their adopted hometown Chicago. A decade after joining Team Dream, a Chicago-based organization training women of color in swimming, biking and triathlon, the two women continue to reach goals they never thought possible. When Misha, a former Division I swimmer, helps them with their starts and turns, the women help her find her way outside the pool. The film culminates with Ann and Madeline competing at the games in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. TEAM DREAM shows you're never too old to dream.
Women are being jailed, physically violated and at risk of dying as a radical movement tightens its grip across America.
As anti-trans legislation and hostility escalate in the United States, a group of dads, building a nascent movement to support their trans and gender expansive kids, are forced to make an impossible choice: stay and fight or flee the country.
A 13-year-old girl and her grandfather, hiding out in a wooded cabin after a plague, meet the challenge of their lives when her birthday trip to a Trading Post goes horribly awry.
On a fishing trip with Matthew Shepard's father, five disparate dads discuss their love, hopes and fears for their trans kids in this short documentary.
In 1903, thirteen Black men and their families fled the violence of Jim Crow South and traveled west to southern New Mexico, where they founded Blackdom, the state’s only all-Black town. More than a century later, the town has disappeared, its land fragmented and landlocked by private property owners, and its story largely erased from public memory. Through the journeys of two descendant families returning to the land their ancestors once homesteaded, Back to Blackdom excavates a buried history and challenges the narrative that labeled the community a failure.
FINALLY, the raw, transparent conversations you wish you heard about money growing up. Find out what happens before the Grammys, Emmy, awards, elevation, recognition and success. Tune in to see how these exceptional guests transformed their passion into profit.
