being mary jane

03 08 2014

New York Women in Film and Television Black Actresses on Screen Panel

ConStar Race and Television, Race and Writer's Rooms being mary jane, black women, Chenoa Maxwell, claire huxtable, daughters of the dust, gladiators, Harlem, Julie Dash, kerry washington, Michelle Obama, MiST Harlem, my image studios, Neema Barnette, New York City, new york women in film and television, NYWiFT, panel discussionr, race and media, rachel wantanabe-batton, scandal, sharon hope, shonda rhimes, women, ylana kellar 1

Panelists: (l-r) Ylana Kellar (moderator), Chenoa Maxwell, Sharon Hope, Neema Barnette, Rachel Watanabe-Batton (r on screen) Julie Dash (l on screen)

Last week, I was blessed to have been able to attend a NYWiFT Panel on the current state of black women on screen at Harlem venue My Image Studios (MiST). It was very inspiring and I got to watch Scandal afterwards with a room full of Gladiators. It was pretty amazing. Here are some of the questions and responses below (featuring general essence of their answers, with direct quotes from my notes).
The panelists for the evening were: Neema Barnette, Julie Dash, Sharon Hope, Chenoa Maxwell, and Rachel Watanabe-Batton with Ylana Kellar as the moderator. You can google them and check out their work like I have been. They’ve all been working in Hollywood trying to get the stories of black women told in the right ways and the things they had to say were very inspiring for all future black artists: whether actors, writers, directors, producers, any kind of black content creator.
The questions and answers are below as slides, click one and read through! These ladies were really inspirational and it was great to just be in a room with other like-minded people. Hopefully the roles portrayed by black actresses will continue to expand in number and in character dimension.