Filmmaker Artist And Author Michele Stephenson From Black Girls Play On ESPN+
b'In ESPN\\u2019s short film Black Girls Play (which won Best Short Doc at the Tribeca Festival), filmmakers Mich\\xe8le Stephenson and Joe Brewster chronicle the origins of the hand games that young Black girls have played for generations, and their influence on music, dance, and community all across the American creative landscape. Tracing the beginnings of the games all the way back to the slavery era, the film\\u2019s collection of illuminating voices \\u2014 including musicians, music educators and ethnomusicologists \\u2014 trace a fascinating cultural history that explains the significance of hand games, particularly in the evolution of popular music from jazz all the way to hip hop. The film also explores hand games\\u2019 influence on style and individualism everywhere from the playground to TikTok videos today.
Filmmaker, artist and author, Mich\\xe8le Stephenson, pulls from her Haitian and Panamanian roots and experience as a social justice lawyer to think radically about storytelling and disrupt the imaginary in non-\\ufb01ction spaces. She tells emotionally driven, personal narratives of resistance and identity that center the lived experiences of communities of color in the Americas and the Black diaspora.
In 2023, Mich\\xe8le\\u2019s feature documentary Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and premiered on MAX. Previously, her feature documentary American Promise was nominated for three Emmys and won the Jury Prize at Sundance. Along with her writing partners, Joe Brewster and Hilary Beard, Mich\\xe8le won an NAACP Image Award for Excellence in a Literary Work for their book, Promises Kept. Currently, she is in post-production on a feature on the death of Freddie Gray and a program for the CBC on the Black Power movement in Canada.'