From the Executive Director

My note this month is a mix of protest song, celebration, and call to action. The work of the Alliance for Media Arts + Culture continues to stand as a protest to governmental forces that are working to deny the voices and humanity of our networks, partners, members, and families. We celebrate the ideas, stories, films, photographs, exhibitions, creative productions, and community gatherings that empower us to stay connected and bold and visible. Our Creative Workforce and Open Archive initiatives, our Innovation Studio projects, Youth Media programs, and Communities of Practice like Unlocking Creativity and Media Arts Leaders — all of this work is our protest song. At the same time, the call to action, the invitation, is to keep close with your people, listen, and keep telling the stories that need to be told. Produce the work. Think of the truest story you can tell and tell it.

In this spirit, at 10AM PT/1PM ET on June 9th, the Alliance for Media Arts + Culture will be hosting ARCHIVAL ACTIVISM, an interactive, webinar-style Zoom conversation with innovative media archivists, artists, and scholars from around the world who are breaking new ground. We’ll be elevating exciting projects to inspire the next generation of cultural producers, audiences, and digital creators. We need new narratives that amplify the power of media archives outside institutions; this conversation will showcase new archival projects that break boundaries of access, that are embedded in public spaces, that are designed for nontraditional screens and structures, and that utilize new technologies to deepen cultural connections and our collective imagination. We will hear from archivists, archival producers, and filmmakers who are bridging gaps between institution and community, who archive to protect those most vulnerable among us, and whose archival activism is a model of cultural survival.

Invited Panelists

More information is HERE, Register on Zoom HERE.
Watch the Video HERE.

Coming up over the next few months, we are also hosting Community of Practice meetings, regional member gatherings across the country, short film grants, and a traveling Youth Media showcase… Please join us, become a mentor, employer, exhibition partner, training center partner — whatever feels right for this leg of the journey.

~ Wendy
wendy@thealliance.media

Notes from the Field

imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival Celebrates 25 Years
imagineNATIVE will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of its annual Film + Media Arts Festival from June 3rd to June 8th in Toronto. The festival is the largest Indigenous media arts festival in the world, and will be showcasing over 100 films from 55 indigenous nations in 16 countries. This year’s festival focuses on the concept of “seedkeeping,” highlighting how storytelling can allow ancestral knowledge to be passed down for future generations, and will feature a retrospect of work previously commissioned for the festival. The festival will extend online, after the conclusion of the portion in Toronto, from June 9th to June 15th.

“Fierce Determination” at the International Queer Women of Color Film Festival
In two weeks, on June 13th, the International Queer Women of Color Film Festival will be hosting its 21st annual event at San Francisco’s historic Presidio Theatre in the Presidio National Park. This year’s festival is themed around “Fierce Determination” and will explore how “LBTQIA+ BIPOC communities persist, thrive, and imagine liberatory futures through radical artistry and collective care” through 49 films. The films range from “the ancestral traditions of Mauna Kea to Black Southern liberation stories.”