Women of Color Film School: Cinematic Critical Race Composite Counterstories From the Classroom to the Screen

• In Event: Women of Color Reclaiming Voice: Engaging Transformative Methodologies to Honor Women of Color Experiences

Abstract

Objectives
This paper session will discuss the adaptation of Tara Yosso’s work with Critical Race Counterstories (2006) in co-creating cinematic composite narratives to illustrate the experiences of Women of Color (WOC) in film school. The discussion will unpack the methodological and pedagogical significance of approaching this work as a collective of WOC grounded in a Cultural Intuition framework (Delgado Bernal, 1998). Discussion of findings is guided by Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) (Yosso, 2005) to identify the various forms of capital held, shared, and created amongst the collective, (i.e. social, aspirational, navigational, familial, linguistic, and resistance capital). Finally, the discussion will conclude with the pedagogical potential of sharing CCRCCs in film school classrooms and communities beyond the classroom.

Theoretical Framework(s)
This study utilizes a Critical Race Theory in education framework (Solórzano, 1997, 1998; Ladson Billings & Tate, 1995; Solórzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001), and Chicana Feminist Epistemologies (Delgado Bernal, 1998; Anzalúa, 2012) to inform a filmmaking-based approach which centers the lived experiences of WOC, through methods which honor their embodied knowledge. In this same way, this work pushes towards a pursuit for social justice in a reclaiming of voice to build and learn collectively in calling for a shift towards intersectional (Crenshaw, 1989) educational support for WOC film students.

Methods
As a filmmaker, and film school alum, the P.I. draws on her own professional and educational experiences to inform a filmmaking-based approach to the overall study. In order to provide safe spaces for collective storytelling, CCRCCs are included as a means to share anonymized stories.

Producing CCRCCs begins with conducting oral history interviews with six Women of Color students with experience in MFA film programs within the last ten years. Collaborators opt for either an on-camera or off-camera interview. Interviews are then coded by the P.I. using in vivo coding (Saldaña, 2015), and (CCW) thematic coding (Yosso, 2005) and written up as collective, composite narratives in the form of short screenplays. These screenplays are then shared with collaborators during analytical writing sessions, where edits and feedback are given to the P.I. The final screenplays are then produced with actors and edited into short videos.

Findings & Scholarly Significance
This study is designed specifically for and with WOC film students, to arrive at narrative tools that not only document their wealth of knowledge and experiences, but also serve as pedagogical tools for other WOC film students to feel seen. Conocimiento, coming to voice, is a process Chicana Feminist scholar, Gloria Anzaldua, has named for the way we come to truly see and know ourselves, and goes further in saying that this journey is often rooted in communal ways of knowing (2012). Towards this process, the collective and co-creative contributions behind CCRCCs includes the accessibility of the filmic form in producing new ways for students to not only present themselves, but to see themselves. As the P.I. works in the duality of insider/outsider, this work also engages the transformational impact of simultaneously creating and witnessing these counter stories as a collective.

Author

• Brenda Y. Lopez, University of California - Los Angeles