Digital Moving Image Salon@Spelman

DMIS Director: Professor Ayoka Chenzira

Event News:
Survival Mode

Spelman College Women's Research and Resource Center
2nd Floor of Oliva Hanks Cosby Academic Center
on Display unil May 23

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Project Director: Ayoka Chenzira
Research and Production Assistants: Cydnee Bayles and Shaquita Brooks, Jennifer Buck and Amber Justice

Video Editors: Cydnee Bayles and Jennifer Buck
Set Design: R. Paul Thomason
Computer Programming: Ayoka Chenzira
Poem: Opal Moore
Essay: William Jelani Cobb

The Digital Moving Image Salon, under the leadership of Professor Ayoka Chenzira, has received a $60,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a collaborative faculty development program with Bennett College to strengthen the Women's Studies program at both campuses.

The grant will be used to introduce new digital media in the form of video games, CD-ROMs, DVDs, Web sites, blogs, electronic kiosks and podcasting, as critical tools for teaching, facilitating and learning through two oral narrative and new media projects.

The "Katrina Project," for example, consists of a collection of oral narratives developed as community quilts that archive stories of heroism, sacrifice and life-altering experiences of Hurricane Katrina victims and survivors. Using digital media, the narratives will be archived and turned into interactive displays for presentation in 2008 at both Spelman and Bennett College.

The second project, known as "Kinship Care," focuses on the growing number of African-American women in Atlanta's West End community who care for their grandchildren and the impact it has had on their lives. A Web site will also provide additional information about the project.

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"Storytelling stands at the center of all cultures. Through stories, we articulate our history, dreams, fears and expectations, as well as our sense of beauty, morality and justice. Whether oral or digital, stories move the work and require us to continually reevaluate who we are and where we are going."
— Ayoka Chenzira

With this in mind, THE DIGITAL MOVING IMAGE SALON (DMIS) began at Spelman College in the Fall of 2004. Founded by filmmaker and digital media artist, Ayoka Chenzira, it is a mechanism through which the College encourages and supports the growing number of students who are interested in creating digital media stories.

In the Salon, students research, develop, write, produce, direct and edit stories for the digital domain, In particular, stories that focus on women's culture that being what mediates between women and society. This focus allows for a new generation of Black women moving image storytellers to participate in important discussions around issues that are critical to their lives and to the lives of women locally, nationally and internationally.

DMIS produces an annual student showcase where students exhibit and discuss their work as well as celebrates the achievements of professional practitioners through its annual REEL Women series: Conversations With Black Women Who Work With The Moving Image

Guests have included LisaGay Hamilton (Beah: A Black Woman Speaks) and Neema Barnett (Civil Brand) and the first
African-American woman to direct a television sitcom series.