Independent Women Filmmakers email: Geechee Girl Many of these films require a bit of research to locate. In future we hope to be more helpful in providing info as to where to get works by these filmmakers.

Madeline Anderson Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Madeline Anderson enrolled in New York University and took a job babysitting in exchange for room and board. Her landlord turned out to be documentary filmmaker Richard Leacock. She eventually went to work for Leacock at Andover Productions. Her first film was Integration Report 1, was made in 1961 documenting the year of the nations first sit-ins. She made the film on her own money for a shoe-string budget. From 1962-1964 Anderson worked with director Shirley Clarke as an assistant diirector on the feature, Cool World (1963). From 1964-1969 she was a film editor, associate producer and producer/director at WNET-TV in New York. While at WNET, Anderson asked to be moved to a new production destined for broadcast history, Black Journal. On Black Journal, with St. Claire Bourne, Stan Lathan and Kent Garrett, the African American audience was presented a with a Black perspective for the first time. The Black Journal team won the Emmy and NATRA awards. Madeline left WNET in 1969 to make I Am Somebody. This film, used as an organizing tool for Hospital Worker's Local 1199, has won international acclaim. From 1971-75 Anderson was supervising film editor and in-house film producer/director on Sesame Street and The Electric Company. In 1975 she founded her own production company, Onyx Productions. In 1977 she became the first African-American woman to executive produce a television series with Infinity Factory, math shows targeted for inner-city youth. She is currently Associate Director of the Office of Black Ministry in the Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens and is involved in various media projects.

Neema Barnette Neema is one of the most prolific and sought after women directors today who has received numerous awards and Emmy nominations for her directorial talents. Born and raised in Harlem, NYC, Neema began her career directing original plays by emerging Black writers which allowed her freedom to develop her own abstract and non linear style of storytelling. Neema's work consistently reflects her desire to re-code the Black experience in film and television. She was the first African American woman to receive a three picture deal at Columbia/Sony Pictures where she developed four screenplays, two television pilots and a television series under her company, Harlem Lite Productions.

Barbara McCullough In 1980 she initiated a market of Black independent films at the Cannes Film Festival Market and screened 7 films by new young Black directors. The success of that venture led to a series of African American Film festivals all over Europe. She is one of the pioneering African American experimental filmmakers. Her films Shopping Bag Spirits and Freeway Fetishes and Water Ritual#1 are bold, thought provoking and evocative. Her films explore "the use of ritual as a means of exorcising the societal frustration which engulf a people." Filmmaker critic Monona Wali says of her work, "Water Ritual is a highly abstract, highly expressionistic work that achieves a kind of mystical quality in perfect of unity of form and content."

Euzhan Palcy Martinique director, Euzhan Palcy won international acclaim for her first feature film, Rue Case Negres (Sugar Cane Alley), (1983) based on the novel by Martinique writer Joseph Zobel. Her first Hollywood feature was A Dry White Season(1989) In 1992 she completed the independently produced the fantasy/musical and her third feature film, Simeon, in Martinique. A talented writer from an early age, she authored, directed and acted in La messagare (1974) a fifty-two minute play for television. Euzhan went on to study literature at the Sorbonne in Paris while attending the Rue Lumiere School with the help of a French grant won in a script competition for her adaption of Rue Case Negre. She is presently developing a project on Bessie Coleman the first black woman pilot who learned to fly in France in the 1920s.

Michelle Parkerson Michelle Parkerson is a poet,writer and independent producer. Her writing has appeared in Heresies, Callaloo, Sinister Wisdom, New York Native, Essence Magazine, The Washington Blade, Black Film Review, The Independent and other publications. Michelle's films have recieved international attention, her work being broadcast and exhibited in festivals around the world. Her films are "But Then, She's Betty Carter", (1980), Gotta Make This Journey, Sweet Honey in the Rock, (1984) and Storme: The Lady of The Jewel Box, (1990).

Darnell Martin Darnell Martin has debuted her first feature film, "I Like it Like that." She has worked as a camera assistant to Ernest Dickerson on Spike Lee's films and then pursued her own career as a writer/director. Born in the Bronx, she exemplifies the kind of toughness and steadfastness needed to make films in the Hollywood arena.