JEWELLE: A Just Vision

Official Selection Queer Women of Color Film Festival 2022
BFI Flare London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival Official Selection
Official Selection Frameline 47 San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival
Official Selection Newfest Pride 2023
Official Selection Seattle Queer Film Festival 2023
Official Selection Newark LGBTQ Film Festival
Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival 2023
Official Selection Out on Film Atlanta's LGBTQ Film Festival 2023
Official Selection Some Prefer Cake Bologna Lesbian Film Festival 2023
3Q Anniversary Official Selection Long Beach Q Film Festival 2023

UPCOMING SCREENINGS

Long Beach QFilm Festival
Saturday, September 16 at 1:30pm PT

Some Prefer Cake Bologna Lesbian Film Festival
Saturday, September 23 at 6:00pm GMT+2

Out On Film's Atlanta LGBTQ Film Festival
Friday, September 29 at 7:00pm ET

Seattle Queer Film Festival
Saturday, October 14 at 3:30pm PT

SYNOPSIS

From Black Power in late-60s Boston, to AIDS activism in mid-80s New York, to Marriage Equality in early-10s San Francisco, JEWELLE: A Just Vision (64 mins, 2022) from award-winning filmmaker Madeleine Lim, shines a joyful and hope-filled spotlight on novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and journalist Jewelle Gomez.

An Ioway and Wampanoag, African American and Cape Verdean, femme lesbian, Jewelle co-founded decades-old social justice organizations that are more relevant than ever. Expansive in her creative imagination, inclusive in her philanthropic leadership, and passionate in her lesbian of color feminist ethics, she is an unrelenting torchbearer for the transformative power of the artist as activist.

Author of the prescient 1991 novel The Gilda Stories, this double Lambda Literary Award winner shaped the emergence of Afro- and Indigenous futurisms through the journey of the titular lesbian vampire, from 1850s slavery era through 2050s climate catastrophe. Jewelle’s plays reclaim queer Black ancestors, writer James Baldwin in Waiting for Giovanni (2011) and singer Alberta Hunter in Leaving the Blues (2017), to reimagine history. Her poems in Still Water (2022) shape our understanding of Native American heritage, identity, and relationships.

JEWELLE: A Just Vision weaves hauntingly spare gothic visuals that illuminate passages from the novel with stirring play performances, riveting book readings, celebratory news events, sultry interludes and cherished moments at home, a treasure trove of personal papers and photos, and incisive interviews with artists, activists, and scholars.

The all-star cast features Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina; Ajuan Mance, professor of African American literature; Brian Freeman, playwright and co-founder of Afro Pomo Homos; Cheryl Clarke, poet and former Rutgers University professor; Crystal Jang, co-founder of Asian Pacific Islander Queer Women and Transgender Community; Jennifer DeVere Brody, Stanford University professor of Theater & Performance Studies; Katherine Acey, Executive Director Emerita of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice; Kim Shuck, San Francisco Poet Laureate and Cherokee artist; Nancy Bereano, founder of Firebrand Books; and Troy Rockett, artist and actor.

The soundtrack draws on African American and Native American spiritual and musical traditions that resonate with grief and healing, and ring with love and laughter. Melanie DeMore, 3-time Grammy nominee, and Allegra Bandy, singer and composer, birth a soulful a cappella score. Additionally, the soundtrack features Toshi Reagon, musician and composer of the Parable of the Sower Octavia Butler opera; Ferron, singer-songwriter and Juno Award nominee; and Ulali, an Indigenous women’s vocal group and Juno Award nominee.

JEWELLE: A Just Vision is an intimate portrayal that drinks deeply from a life of art and activism, and anchors Jewelle’s personal struggles at the confluence of social movements, to gift humanity with fierce hope.

Filmmaker Madeleine Lim

Madeleine Lim is an award-winning filmmaker with over 25 years of experience as a producer, director, cinematographer and editor. Her films have screened at sold-out theaters at international film festivals around the world, including the Vancouver International Film Festival, Mill Valley Film Festival, and Amsterdam Amnesty International Film Festival. Her work has been featured at universities and museums like the de Young, and Asian Art in San Francisco, and Crocker Art in Sacramento, and broadcast to millions on PBS.

Lim’s films have received awards from the prestigious and highly competitive Paul Robeson Independent Media Fund, as well as the Frameline Film Completion Fund. She received the 1997 Award of Excellence from the San Jose Film & Video Commission’s Joey Awards and won the 1998 National Educational Media Network Bronze Apple Award. From 2000 to 2003, she was a California Arts Council Artist-in-Residence. The Featured Filmmaker at the 2006 APAture Asian American Arts Festival, Lim has four times been awarded the San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist Commission for her films. She received grants from the Community Story Fund from Cal Humanities and the San Francisco Foundation Bay Area Documentary Fund for her film, The Worlds of Bernice Bing (2013), which won the Audience Award at the 2013 Queer Women of Color Film Festival. She holds a BA in Cinema from San Francisco State University, where she was awarded Outstanding Cinema Student of the Year. Since 2004, she has been an Adjunct Professor in the Film/Media Studies Department at the University of San Francisco.

Madeline Lim Director Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project Photo by Leilani Nisperos

CONTACT

PRESS INQUIRIES:

communications@qwocmap.org

Distribution INQUIRIES:

distribution@qwocmap.org

(415) 752-0868

1014 Torney Avenue, Suite 111, San Francisco, CA 94129

PRESS COVERAGE

Local legends featured at Frameline's LGBTQ+ film festival
Source: KALW Public Media, June 2023

Frameline Lesbian/Queer Film
Source: KPFA Women’s Magazine, June 2023

Pass the Remote: LGBTQ+ films of local and international appeal in Frameline 47
Source: Local News Matters, June 2023

Highlights From Frameline47
Source: San Francisco Bay Times, June 2023

Asian American Films And More For Pride Month
Source: Center for Asian American Media, June 2023

NewFest Pride Reveals Lineup for its 3rd Annual Summer Film Series
Source: Advocate, June 2023

NewFest Pride Summer Film Series returns to New York with sizzling five-day lineup
Source: The Queer Review, May 2023

NewFest Unveils Full Lineup For 3rd Annual ‘NewFest Pride’ Summer Film Event
Source: Deadline, May 2023

Newfest Pride offers lineup of anticipated queer films
Source: Gay City News, May 2023

Queer people are stronger together at BFI Flare 2023
Source: Little White Lies, March 2023

The Stroll opens 37th BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival running till March 26th
Source: The Queer Review, March 2023

37th BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival 2023 Full Programme Announced 15
Source: Fab UK, March 2023

All The Sapphic Content Showing At BFI Flare 2023
Source: Sapphic Nation, March 2023

OutBeat Radio Interview On SDFF 2023 LGBTQIA+ Films
Source: Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival, February 2023

BFI Flare London LGBTQ+ Film Festival announces full programme for 2023
Source: Visit Gay London, February 2023

Full programme announced for 37th BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival 2023
Source: BFI Flare, February 2023

BFI FLARE: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival 2023 – Full Programme Announced
Source: Close-Up Film, February 2023

Jewelle On The Big Screen: You Have to Imagine A Better World to Get to A Better World
Source: GLAAD, June 2022

SDFF News Bits: Alumni Updates, Fests, Honors, New Docs, Industry Happenings
Source: Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival, June 2022

Envisioning Black and Indigenous Futures with ‘Jewelle’
Source: Black Girl Nerds, October 2021

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