.Justice for My Sister's Black, Indigenous, People of Color Sci-Fi Screenwriting Lab (Lab) will provide a space where underrepresented aspiring screenwriters create solutions to our global problems. The series will provide working adults with the tools to imagine ourselves into the future as people of color in a genre that has historically excluded us. Over 8 weeks, participants will refine short film scripts that address themes of land and cultural preservation.
Black, Indigenous and Latinx communities have historically been excluded from important decisions about the preservation of air, earth, water, and fire. Over 29% of all new Netflix content falls under the Sci-Fi and Fantasy genre. Despite this exponential growth, racial diversity within the genre (and the film industry at large) remains sorely lacking. In a 2014 study conducted by Lee and Low Books, only 8% of all protagonists in Sci-Fi and Fantasy films were people of color.
The peoples that tend to and honor these sacred natural resources in ritual, song, palabra, and dance need to create stories about how we will save our Mother Earth. The Lab will provide a space for intergenerational participants who have not had access to traditional screenwriting programs. With support of mentors, students will learn how to support the work of their peers from a trauma-informed, gender equity and justice lens, and finesse their own scripts so that they are production-ready.
The Lab will educate 20 women and gender non-binary individuals in screenwriting, media literacy, trauma-informed writing approaches and Afrofuturist literature. We intend for participants to develop professional relationships with their mentors and each other, as well as industry professionals we invite to our culminating event where excerpts of the students' films are read by actors. Scripts will serve as the students' sample work that will be part of their artistic portfolios.
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