Our Voices Project

19/04/2025

was EVERYTHING! 🔥🔥🔥 Here's our short, spoiler-FREE review:

Ryan Coogler KNOCKS IT OUT OF THE PARK like we knew he would. Drawing from history, folklore, culture, and other works of art, Coogler packs on LAYERS with this film calling to a deeper message that has reverberated through time and is relevant now more than ever specific to Black culture. (Again, we said this was spoiler free! GO SEE IT!)

This was TRULY for the culture!

We really need you to get the messages of this film. It's an original piece shot BEAUTIFULLY by the talented with incredible performances by all. Michael B Jordan is so phenomenal - you forget that he's not a twin in real life - that's two different characters. Super happy to see on the big screen - she was born to play this. We KNEW she was a star after having watched her performances in Lovecraft Country!

What a RIDE this film was! Totally need to do a deeper dive on our podcast. We need to UNPACK THESE LAYERS - who's down to join us?! 🎙🎬

10/10!

11/04/2025

Bryan Little, a former Marine, talks about the profound impact that mail has in connecting soldiers to home during wartime in our discussion about the film, "The Six Triple Eight".

You can watch the full episode from our podcast, "Representation in Cinema" on our YouTube channel or listen on Spotify.

10/04/2025

THIS is what community looks like!

This past Saturday, we sat down with several of our storytellers & crew who made our film, Being Black in America, possible.

Special thanks to Nubian Dessert for the cupcakes! They were a highlight to a beautiful day spent with our people.

It's important to us that we connect with our storytellers well after we've wrapped. More of these to come for us as well as updates regarding our film!

24/03/2025

It's Free Palestine FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA. 👇🏾

Posted • A group of settlers just LYNCHED and BEAT Hamdan Ballal, Director of the movie “No Other Land.”

Soldiers INVADED the ambulance he called and TOOK him.

There has been NO sign of him since.

Via:

21/03/2025

MOVIES that are a MUST SEE this weekend (swipe left to get descriptions):

"No Other Land" (.film): Now playing today at 3:45pm and tomorrow (3/22) at Noon at . Directed by , , , & Rachel Szor.

"Black Girls": Available Now on Peacock (Directed by - go follow her!)

"Sugarcane": You can watch on Hulu or Disney Plus or rent on Apple or Amazon. (If you’re boycotting all of these, you can watch on FuboTV with a free trial.) Go follow the page - and the directors, & .

Hollywood is NOT going to tell our stories for us - we have to do that and support Black, Brown, and Indigenous-centered films and filmmakers.

Let us know below if you've seen/heard of any of these and/or if you plan to watch this weekend!

11/03/2025

Black women have been making powerful films for decades, yet we're still "hard to find"? Nah.

Here's a list of Black women directors you NEED to know.

(And yes, I'm one of them. 💅🎬)

Tag a friend or colleague who needs this list and if you're a Black womxn director, tag yourself so we can follow you!

Directors to follow:
(Black Barbie, Netflix)
(Black Girls, Peacock)
(A Thousand and One)

Nia DaCosta
(Harriet, Eve's Bayou)
(Origin, Selma, A Wrinkle in Time, 13th)
(The Woman King, Old Guard, Love & Basketball, Beyond the Lights)

09/03/2025

Sunday vibes 📸😁📚

Totally meant to post this last Sunday when invited a bunch of us to Books N' Brunch! (It's called Lazy Sunday for a reason! 🤣)

A time to network, sit down over drinks and great food (shoutout to 😋) and talk about Dr. Audrey T. McCluskey’s book, A Forgotten Sisterhood: Pioneering Black Women Educators and Activists in the Jim Crow South.

Building community has been a focus of mine for a while now and getting to spend some time with these ladies was everything! Thank you for invite Katrina and looking forward to diving deeper into the book!

- Jackie

03/03/2025

Hey Friends and Happy Monday!

We shared some thoughts about last night's win for Best Documentary with No Other Land and included it in an email to subscribers: https://mailchi.mp/ourvoicesproject/were-taking-a-little-break-8040978

Let us know if you'd like to be added to our mailing list!

03/03/2025

Don't mind us - just over here BOOHOOING. This win is incredibly important. The first time a Palestinian has had the chance to win an Oscar and call out the complicity of the US gov't for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. An important and well deserved win tonight! 🇵🇸

‘No Other Land’ has won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, marking a monumental recognition of Palestinian storytelling and resilience on the world’s biggest stage. This film, created by a Palestinian and Israeli team, captures the brutal reality of occupation, displacement, and resistance with raw, unfiltered truth.

At a time when Palestinian voices are often silenced, this victory is a powerful statement: the world is listening, and the Palestinian struggle for justice and liberation cannot be ignored. Representation matters, and this Oscar win is not just for the filmmakers—it’s for every Palestinian who has fought to be seen and heard.

28/02/2025

We asked students, staff, and vendors two BIG questions about film—and their answers might surprise you. 🎬 But first, here’s how it all went down! We pulled up to .naz’s Black Business Expo, got our table set up, and put our prompts out for everyone to see. Then, the responses started rolling in! Stick around to see what people said!

From setting up our table to connecting with students, staff, and vendors, we had some incredible conversations about Black storytelling and community. 🖤✨

Now we’re asking YOU:
🎥 What’s a film that made you feel seen?
📖 What’s a film that should be required viewing for everyone?

Drop your answers below & tag a friend to join the convo! ⬇️🎤

26/02/2025

Here at the Black Business Expo with .naz!

25/02/2025

Have you seen The Great Debaters? We're going to reference it in a moment to impart a few words of advice. Go through the photos to read through them and afterwards please tag an organization that folks can join.

Otherwise, you can also read it here:

DO NOT COMPLY.

There's so much that's going on domestically and internationally - far right-wing governments all over the globe wreaking HAVOC. Seems like every minute of every day is something and it's hard to keep up. It's the constant sense of dread, fear, confusion, and despair.

I'm here to remind you that it's by DESIGN. All of this is meant to discourage you from acting and disrupting and, instead, to just accept what it is happening because there's no way that you could possibly do anything to stop it, right?

WRONG.

In the film, The Great Debaters (2007) directed by (and starring) Denzel Washington Professor Melvin Tolson coaches the first debate team at Wiley College, an HBCU in Marshall, Texas, in 1935. These students debate other HBCUs and eventually Harvard all while living in the Jim Crow South - the US apartheid system - with the threat of lynchings, violent intimidation by neighbors, and police brutality everywhere they go.

It's on Peacock TV if you haven't seen it. In their final debate with Harvard, 2 students, James Farmer Jr. and Samantha Booke, have to argue in the affirmative for the following:

Civil disobedience as a moral weapon in the fight for justice - something my ancestors have been doing for centuries. Sometimes "civil" and other times "uncivil" all for the advancement of Black folks, and therefore, all.

The writer behind this very post is a Black American. I'm here because I have ancestors who survived the transatlantic slave trade and chattel slavery, Jim Crow, and so much more who still fought the system - this system that's so incredibly racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist and corrupt - by any means necessary.

We're filmmakers who advocate for Black, Brown and Indigenous people and share the FULL history of this country despite folks in authority trying to bury that history.

What are YOUR gifts and abilities? USE those & get involved with a local org behind causes you care about! (Tag 1 below!)

22/02/2025

It's a little experiment that we could use your help with!

If this is your first time seeing our page - WELCOME! 😁❤️ We’re Our Voices Project (OVP), a production company committed to sharing the stories and lived experiences of Black, Brown, and Indigenous Peoples through visual storytelling and truthtelling. 🎬🎞

Whether you're new or not, we need 2 things:

1) Comment SEEN (or something you appreciate about OVP) to let us know you see this and

2) Answer our poll to let us know if you'd like to see weekend updates from us via Stories/Posts to catch you up on upcoming projects or events and new podcast episodes! 👇🏾

Thank you all!

20/02/2025

For the series’s final screening, we welcome Jackie McGriff, Courtney Shouse, Muna Taha, and Trish Corcoran to screen “This Is My Grandmother.” Catch the final screening of AIISP’s Indigenous Film Screening Series this Thursday at 5:30 in Goldwin Smith Hall, room G64.

12/02/2025

Our event tonight is also being LIVESTREAMED! TUNE IN to Town of Irondequoit !

12/02/2025

🚨 DO NOT MISS this important screening and discussion today at 6-8:30pm at Irondequoit Town Hall! 🎬📣

In our documentary short film, Being Black in America, two storytellers reflect on the power of knowing one’s history, which includes ancestry. What the Brister English Project does is not only help Black folks do this, but it is also essential to preserving our history and culture when so many entities and people are brutally adamant in keeping it hidden from us.

Our Voices Project and the Brister English Project are teaming up to host a screening of Being Black in America and to discuss the challenges, complex emotions and racism, starting with the 1950’s Jim Crow era to present day, involved in making genealogy accessible to Black people with the Brister English Project.

This event is free and open to the public.

BE THERE FOR A VERY IMPORTANT DISCUSSION!