I M. womyn

Queer African American women speak for themselves

When young filmmaker Tiona M. trained her camera on black lesbians and asked them about representations of queer African-American women in the mainstream media, she heard a lot of interesting comments about Spike Lee's film She Hate Me - and not much else. There wasn't much else to talk about. That void underscores the motivation behind, and the need for, M.'s first feature documentary, black./womyn.:conversations with lesbians of African descent, which screens Saturday afternoon at The Boston Gay and Lesbian Film/Video Festival.

"This is the project for women to speak for themselves, instead of being spoken for," M. summed up the film in a phone interview. A true labor of love for the Philadelphia-based filmmaker, she produced, shot and edited the documentary over five years while working as a videographer and editor.

"In the beginning I thought this was going to be some blockbuster shit," she laughs, "with film and lasers. But no one wants to put money into a film that's just 50 black lesbians talking."

Unable to find investors, M. financed the film herself, a tricky proposition on the erratic income of a freelancer. "Whenever I had money I put it into the film," she continues "for travel or renting a camera. Renting equipment is expensive! It's like giving away money."

Travel was a key component, as M. wanted to include a wide range of women's viewpoints. She recruited interview subjects through online ads, chatting people up at clubs, and visiting Pride festivals. "I got turned down a lot, but I kept asking," she says simply. After weeding out some obvious weirdos, she was left with nearly 100 interview subjects. Armed with a camera and microphones, but no specific agenda, M. spoke with her subjects about everything from religion to family to butch/femme roles.

"I shot every interview," she explains of the process. "I was the only camera person there. Some of the subjects are painful and you want them to feel safe to talk about it. My only tactic was to make it more of a conversation. If you ask set questions you get a sterile response. I wanted to encourage a back and forth that's more natural."

The result was hundreds of hours of footage to weed through, which M. watched almost obsessively. She marked out people to eliminate from the final cut because they looked uncomfortable on camera, and noted emerging themes and commonalities as she began to envision how to shape these individual narratives into a film.

"It was overwhelming," she admits. "Each woman was so engaging that I wanted to show as much as I could. I had to learn that I couldn't. I had to give a sense of who they are while keeping it tight. So I organized it around these topics."

In addition to learning how to shape a documentary, M. was learning a lot about life. "I grew up with this film," she states. "I was 21 when I started. I was asking women about things I hadn't experienced myself. Getting older and having more experience really guided the way I was able to talk to the women. The topics I chose to deal with were influenced by my growth as well.

"Marriage wasn't originally going to be in there because I was 21 and I thought, who cares about marriage? And I didn't really have a grasp on racism and patriarchy within the LGBT community."

Later in the process, when M. had become a supporter of marriage equality, the issue proved to be thorny for the opposite reason. She wrestled over whether to include one subject's anti-marriage views. "A lesbian against marriage!" she marvels, before continuing in a more serious vein. "The activism and marriage section was very tough for me. I had to step back and get rid of my shit and make sure I was presenting these women as they are, even when they were saying things I didn't agree with. It would be very dishonest not to represent those views. It's not about me at all."

Fortunately, M. had a special resource available for dealing with these finer points. "I had a lot of arguments with my girlfriend over it," she laughs. "There was no producer on my back telling me what to do, so I would bring my girlfriend in."

Ultimately, the hardest task was choosing what to leave out. The first cut of the film was roughly two hours long, a daunting length for a talking heads doc. M. reluctantly carved the running time down to a tight 97 minutes. "So many of these women deserve their own documentaries," she says passionately, "and it was very hard to leave some of that footage out. And I can't lie, I had my favorites who I wanted to put in every scene."

But M.'s work doesn't end with the final cut. Now begins the search for distribution. She knows companies specializing in educational fare will be interested in her work, but she's reluctant to put her film in such a small pigeonhole. "I want to reach the black lesbian community," she muses, "because there's a power in seeing yourself on a positive platform. And not everyone is 21 and in college, majoring in women's studies."

Not to mention the possibility of the film crossing over to other communities. M. says she's been touched by the positive response black./womyn has received from all sorts of audiences on the film festival circuit. "I think it's important to break into those spaces that wouldn't necessarily show a project like this. I knew the lesbian community would be appreciative, but I didn't have big hope for film festivals because it's not the usual kind of documentary, with narration and B roll. It's 97 minutes of women talking.

"Being able to have white, black, Latino, intergenerational audiences ... see the film and talk about it, is a great feeling."

Tiona M. will speak after the screening of black./womyn, which is co-presented by Queer Women of Color and Friends Boston, The Bayard Rustin Community Breakfast/AAC, and The Roxbury Film Festival. 1:30 p.m. on Saturday May 17 at The Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave, Boston. For tickets, or more information about the Gay and Lesbian Film/Video Festival, call 617-369-3907 or visit www.mfa.org/film.