CUNY Latin American/Latinx Studies Symposium (April 23)

LASA Film Festival (May 26-29)

Philadelphia Latino Film Festival (May 30-June 6)

This raw, gutsy portrait of New York's Chinatown captures the early days of an emerging consciousness in the community. We see a Chinatown rarely depicted, a vibrant community whose young and old join forces to protest police brutality and hostile real estate developers. With bold strokes, it paints an overview of the community and its history, from the early laborers driving spikes into the transcontinental railroad to the garment workers of today.

"Technique for us is secondary. The people themselves have a rich life experience, a knowledge of history and their culture and community organization. And these people are far more qualified to make films than people who have learned their skills in a school." -Christine Choy

Trailblazing artist and polymath Camille Billops (1933–2019) and her partner in life and work, James Hatch (1928–2020), left behind invaluable legacies as archivists who worked tirelessly to preserve records of Black cultural life and as filmmakers who turned their unflinching camera on Billops’s own, often painful personal experiences. The films they made together, while grounded in documentary, use a range of techniques including reenactments, dramatization, and satire to illuminate the ways in which race, gender, and class shape everyday life. In their Family Trilogy—SUZANNE, SUZANNE; FINDING CHRISTA; and A STRING OF PEARLS—the pair cover more than thirty years of troubling truths from Billops’s own family, tackling issues of drug addiction, abuse, unwanted pregnancy, and motherhood with fearless honesty.

Originally released in 1978, A DREAM IS WHAT YOU WAKE UP FROM explores the role of Black families in American society. The everyday lives of three Black families with different approaches to their struggle for survival in the United States are represented through a mix of fiction and documentary scenes, a docudrama style inspired by the work of Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez.

From fundraising to editing, cameras, and lighting, to talks about the making of films, we have videos to keep you learning your craft and hearing about filmmakers' experiences—free virtual training.

COVID-19 New York State Council on the Arts Resource List

Jerome Foundation (NYC Film, Video & Digital Production Grant)

Sundance Documentary Fund 

Third World Newsreel Briefly includes interviews with JT Takagi, Executive Director, Bev Grant, Newsreel filmmaker, Desi del Valle, former staff and TWN Workshop Fellow, and Kazembe Balagun, TWN Workshop Fellow. Thanks to Pablo Arribas of LaVitrola.cl for the interview and trailer and the TWN family for their support!