Filmmakers
They came from Watts. They came from New York City. They came from throughout America or crossed an ocean from Africa. At a unique time and place in American history, a critical mass of filmmakers of African descent came to the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television to make movies and produced a rich, innovative, sustained, and intellectually rigorous body of work. The filmmakers of the L.A. Rebellion achieved this while realizing a new possibility for “Black” cinema, one that explored and related to the real lives of Black communities in the U.S. and worldwide.
Learn more about the UCLA Film & Television Archive’s ongoing “L.A. Rebellion” inititiative.
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Gay Abel-Bey After receiving her B.A. from Mount Holyoke College, Gay Abel-Bey earned her M.F.A. in Film from UCLA. She was granted The Dorothy Arzner Award for high recognition of a dramatic piece by a woman for her thesis film, Fragrance (1991).... |
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Shirikiana Aina Shirikiana Aina, writer and director, was born in 1955. After obtaining her B.A. in Film from Howard University, she earned an M.A. in African Film Studies from UCLA in 1982. That same year, she directed the documentary Brick By Brick... |
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Don Amis Don Amis is a documentary filmmaker who was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After serving in the Air Force, he joined his sister in Los Angeles. He enrolled at UCLA in 1970 through the High Potential Program, an initiative to recruit... |
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Melvonna Ballenger Melvonna Marie Ballenger, affectionately known as “Mel” was born on August 6, 1954 in St. Louis, Missouri. Ballenger attended Stephens College for women in Columbia, Missouri, and later transferred to Howard University where she earned her... |
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S. Torriano Berry S. Torriano Berry is an award-winning independent film producer, writer and director, born in Kansas City, Kansas. After obtaining a B.A. in Art/Photography from Arizona State University, Berry received an M.F.A. in Film Production from UCLA in... |
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Carroll Parrott Blue Carroll Parrott Blue is an award-winning filmmaker, author and interactive multimedia producer. Currently a research professor at the University of Houston’s Center for Public History and the Texas Learning & Computation Center, her non-... |
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Charles Burnett Charles Burnett is a writer-director whose work has received extensive honors. Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, his family soon moved to the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. Burnett studied creative writing at UCLA before entering the University... |
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Ben Caldwell Arts educator and independent filmmaker Ben Caldwell grew up assisting his grandfather, who projected movies at a small theater in New Mexico. His passion for the visual arts lead him to study film at UCLA and reside in the neighborhood of... |
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Larry Clark Larry Clark is a filmmaker and professor of film at San Francisco State University. Born in Ohio (where he was president of the Black Student Union at Miami University), he later drove to Los Angeles to enroll in UCLA film school. With... |
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Julie Dash Born in New York City, Julie Dash is a filmmaker, music video and commercial director, author and website creator. Her film studies began in Harlem in 1969, but eventually led her to the American Film Institute and UCLA, where she made The... |
