Stormé (Bright) Sweet

Stormé (Bright) Sweet is a documentarian who fell in love with the cultural influence of filmmaking as an undergraduate, while studying Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954) and Rashomon (1950) in a Japanese film class.

Stormé has produced and directed several individual accounts of lived history and the human condition. Some of her work includes The Single Parent: Images in Black (1982), in which black parents discuss their feelings about raising children alone, as well as Locker Room Rites (1978), which explores the superstitions of professional athletes. Stormé also produced and directed That’s Love: Celebrity Tennis Tournament (1978) for the City of Long Beach, which aired on Public Broadcasting.

In 1982 Stormé and fellow filmmakers, Melvonna Ballenger, Julie Dash and Alile Sharon Larkin, formed the Black Filmmakers Collective as part of the independent black cinema movement. She co-produced and directed When I Grow Up I Want To Marry An African Prince (1984), a video with accompanying workshops exploring visual stereotypes in the media. The piece aired on cable TV and was presented at the National Black Programming Consortium Conference in 1982 in Atlanta, Georgia. Stormé's documentaries have also been used in workshops and as teaching aids in the California University system.

Current work includes Back Burner Baby, intimate discussions with siblings of children who have severe disabilities and The Journey (in production), a collection of legacy essays, gently examining the evolving social constructs of centenarians and other senior citizens.

Stormé has taught secondary education and lectured at Cal Poly Pomona. She is the Executive Director of the Aliah Sweet Fragile Hearts Foundation, an organization established in 2003 to provide support and grant wishes for siblings of children with severe, multiple, life-threatening disabilities. She is a speaker, writer and skilled researcher. Stormé was one of the first female sports agents certified by the NFL.