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AND AGAIN I DREAM WORLD PREMIERE at Cleveland Film Festival April 10th and 11th
Ivy Young, a journalist and organizer, knows that mainstream society will not preserve her story after she's gone, so she rallies friends and her niece Jade – a history teacher whom she inspired with her vision and her grit – to defy the past for the sake of a compassionate, united, and righteous future. Together, Jade, bright-eyed history student Mariah, and lifelong friend Catherine explore Ivy’s archive of experience, illuminating Ivy’s life across queer generations, forging a bridge between memory, activism, and identity. |
Anchoring the archive - where she lives nowCatherine wrote Ivy to let her know where her stuff went |
April 17th, 2026
My dearest Bissau, I'm not losing you again.
Today, two years and ten months after April 24, 2023 - the day you slipped beyond the veil and joined the ancestors, your beloved mother, your radiant brother Ronnie - your flotsam and jetsam are leaving our office.
I have been sitting with those words all morning. Flotsam. Jetsam. The language of shipwrecks and survival. Flotsam is what the sea claims by accident, what floats loose after catastrophe. Jetsam is what is cast overboard on purpose, lightened in distress so the vessel might endure.
Your archive has been both.
There were times after you died when everything felt like wreckage, papers and photographs and drafts and letters rising around me like debris after impact. And yet, you did not leave me wreckage. You left me purpose. You left me stewardship. You left me your life, gathered in boxes and folders and hard drives and open reels (your reel to reel radio show recordings) and your marginalia. You left me your thinking. Your becoming. Your unfinished sentences. Your brilliance.
You left me to take care of your stuff.
For over three years you and I filmed and cajoled and laughed and listened to each other in your house on Blaine Street, where you grew up and where you returned to, for the last years of your life. When you left for good, the house exhaled you into my hands.
Since then, I have lived with you here in my office. I have filmed you. I have read you aloud. I have questioned you and wept with you and organized you. I held your notebooks, journals, letters, and scraps of poetry, like sacred texts. I opened envelopes as though they might breathe... |
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Also in Cleveland, Senator Nina Turner in Conversation with Cat |
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OHIO Cleveland Film Festival April 10th, 7-8:15pm Conversation Center at the Idea Center (WIST) |
Following a screening of PAINT ME A ROAD OUT OF HERE at CIFF, join us for a conversation with director Catherine Gund and Senator Nina Turner that will cover how movies portray inequality, injustice, and human rights issues, including race, and socioeconomic status, along with audience obligations, and film’s capacity to promote real-world change, including the filmmaker’s role and responsibility. Moderated by Queen Meccasia Zabriskie, Director of the Coretta Scott King Center for Cultural and Intellectual Freedom. |
OHIO Cleveland Film Festival April 10th, 5pm Playhouse Square Campus
April 11th, 12:15pm Cedar Lee Theatre |
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ILLINOIS Colossal, Intuit Art Museum, Women and Gender Studies Department at DePaul University DePaul School of Cinematic Arts 243 S. Wabash Ave., Chicago IL 60604 March 25th, 6-8pm |
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Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter: Epilogues of the Black Madonna
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Art Exhibit in Philadelphia |
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Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter (executive producer and film participant, Paint Me a Road Out of Here) has her first solo show in her hometown of Philadelphia.
Epilogues of the Black Madonna expands upon her widely lauded photographic series, “Consecration to Mary." In this innovative presentation, Baxter presents the series as a part of a larger, sculptural installation that draws together Christian worship furnishings, medieval Marian iconography, 19th century photography and self-portraiture. Rooted in Black feminist thought and transformative justice, Baxter envisions new ways to reclaim the sanctity of Black girlhood.
January 23 – April 4, 2026 1614 Latimer Street Philadelphia, PA |
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Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, The Veil, 2025, from the series “Cult of the Virgin,” digital print on aluminum, 62” x 47” |
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Celebrating the Life of Paula Pree... |
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We remember the beautiful singer and community organizer Paula Pree. |
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Our hearts go out to the family and friends of Paula Pree, who passed away on January 7th, 2026. She leaves behind a legacy of love, resilience, and song. We had the opportunity to get to know her through Ivy Young and through Pree’s work as a founding member of the a cappella group In Process. A bio of her from 1985 describes Paula as a generous soul, who “shares her house… her love, her voice and her spirit with anyone.” |
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Celebrating the Life of John Forté... |
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We honor music producer, musician and visionary John Forté. |
We send love and prayers to the family and friends of John Forté, who passed away this January. Forté was a producer, composer, and visionary who not only worked with the Fugees to create some of Hip Hop's most iconic music, but also was the composer for PAINT ME A ROAD OUT OF HERE. We are so grateful to have had the honor of working alongside him and his genius. |
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“This is, indeed, poetry.” - The New York Times
“A gorgeous, quietly energetic, and moving meditation..” - The New Yorker |
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Watch the MEANWHILE Trailer |
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