Aishah Shahidah Simmons Biographical Sketch
Aishah Shahidah Simmons | Documentary Filmmaker | Lecturer | Activist Biographaphical Sketch
Aishah Shahidah Simmons is an award-winning African-American feminist lesbian independent documentary filmmaker, television and radio producer, published writer, international lecturer, and activist based in Philadelphia, PA.
For twenty-years, she has been both motivated and engaged as a cultural worker because she believes each one of us has the birth right to live in a world where oppression and exploitation based on gender, race/ethnicity, national origin/citizenship, sexual orientation, class, and/or religion of anyone is non-existent.
In 1992, Ms. Simmons founded AfroLez® Productions, an AfroLez®femcentric multimedia arts company committed to using the moving image, the written and spoken word to address those issues which have a negative impact on marginalized and disenfranchised people.
Coined in 1990 by Aishah, AfroLez®femcentric defines the culturally conscious role of Black women who identify as Afrocentric, lesbian, and feminist.
For three years she co-produced two monthly public television programs for a PBS affiliate in Philadelphia. Her internationally acclaimed short videos Silence…Broken and In My Father’s House, which were produced in 1993 and 1996, explore the issues of race, gender, homophobia, rape, and misogyny.
An incest and rape survivor, she spent eleven years, seven of which were full time, to produce write, and direct NO! The Rape Documentary. This award-winning, internationally-acclaimed, groundbreaking documentary explores the international reality of rape and other forms of sexual assault through the first person testimonies, scholarship, spirituality, activism and cultural work of African-Americans. NO! also explores how rape is used as a weapon of homophobia.
AfroLez® Productions is distributing NO! in partnership with California Newsreel, the oldest non-profit social issue documentary center and distributor in the United States. On February 14, 2006, NO! had her world premiere at the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles, CA. In September 2006, NO! won the Audience Choice Award and a Juried Award at the San Diego Women Film Festival. NO! also won the juried Best Documentary Award at the 2008 India International Women’s Film Festival. In 2009, NO! was among the invited 50 documentaries and short narrative films from 22 countries, which were featured in the Open Frame Film Festival, which is organized by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PBST) in New Delhi, India. Most recently NO!, was included in JustFilms, a new online archive of social justice films that the Ford Foundation has supported over the past 30 years.
NO! has been screened throughout the United States, in South Africa, Canada, Italy, Spain, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Macedonia, Kosovo, Czech Republic, Moldova, Slovakia, Slovenia, Austria, Nepal, Bulgaria, Rwanda, Kenya, Nepal, Sierra Leone, Jordan, Burkina Faso, Peru, Colombia, Guadeloupe, Venezuela, Brazil, India, France, England, Haiti, Guam, St. Thomas, Turkey, Malaysia, and Mexico.
Alice Walker, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Color Purple says, “If the Black community in the Americas and in the world would save itself it must complete the work this film [NO!] begins.”
Raised as a Sufi Muslim, Ms. Simmons is featured in Farah Nousheen’s award-winning documentary Nazrah: A Muslim Woman’s Perspective. Since 2002, Ms. Simmons has been a practitioner of Vipassana Meditation as taught by S.N. Goenka, in the tradition of Sayagi U Ba Khin. She spent six weeks in India in to delve deeper into this ancient, non-sectarian technique, which was originally taught by The Buddha, and has been practiced continuously for over 2500 years. After a two-year hiatus, Ms. Simmons resumed post-production on Liberation from Within, her forthcoming documentary about the first 10-day Vipassana Meditation course, held in India in December 2009, for people of African heritage worldwide. Liberation from Within will explore both how vipassana meditation is being used as a tool for social change; and why African descended people from Ethiopia, Egypt, Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Seychelles, Zambia, England, United States journeyed to India to learn and practice this ancient technique together, with people from India, Mongolia, Russia, France, Argentina, and Singapore for 10-days.
Ms. Simmons was a spring 2009 Artist-in-Residence at the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture and Lecturer in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. During her residency, Ms. Simmons taught an undergraduate course titled “Sisters Outsider: Diasporic African Women Narrative and Documentary Filmmakers.” Additionally, Ms. Simmons is the recipient of numerous grants, awards, and honors including but not limited to:
- 2010 Co-Recipient, with Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons, Ph.D., Scarritt-Bennett Center’s Ann L. Resovac Courage Award
- 2010 Artist-in-Residence at Emporia State University
- 2009 Artist-in-Residence at the Center for the Stud of Race, Politics, and Culture at the University of Chicago
- 2008 Philadelphia Black Gay Pride Legends Award
- 2007 International Federation of Black Prides Award
- 2007 Media Award from the Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community
- 2006 Ford Foundation grant to support the international educational marketing and distribution of NO!
- 2006 DC Rape Crisis Center’s Visionary Award
- 2006 National Award for Outstanding Response to and Prevention of Sexual Violence from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center
- 2005 Inaugural Transformation Award from the Leeway Foundation
- 2005 Artist-in-Residence at Spelman College’s Digital Moving Image Salon
- several production/post-production grants from the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, the Valentine Foundation, the Bread and Roses Community Fund, the Gloria Steinem Fund of the Ms. Foundation for Women, the Delaware Valley Legacy Fund of the Philadelphia Foundation, the Open Meadows Fund, the Women’s Way Discretionary Fund, Amnesty International Human Rights Program, the Funding Exchange, Prince George’s County Sheriff’s Department, Prince George’s County Council, Pennsylvania chapter of the National Organization for Women, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Cercle des Libres Penseurs des Bruxelles (Belgium), and Group du 6 Novembre (France).
Ms. Simmons is also featured in Tiona McClodden’s internationally acclaimed, award-winning documentary black./womyn.:conversations with lesbians of African descent.
She has screened her work and facilitated workshops and dialogues to educate about , heal from, and work towards ending all forms sexual violence; and the grassroots process of making documentaries that advocate for radically compassionate social change to racially to racially and ethnically diverse audiences at international film festivals, colleges and universities, high schools, conferences, rape crisis centers, battered women shelters, community centers, juvenile correctional facilities, and government sponsored events across the United States, throughout Italy, in South Africa, Canada, France, England, Croatia, Hungary, The Netherlands, Mexico, Kenya, Malaysia, and India.
She is the author of numerous published essays, some of which have been translated into French and Italian, all of which are featured in anthologies and journals in the United States and internationally including Just Sex: Students Rewrite the Rules on Sex, Violence, Equality & Activism (Jodi Gold and Susan Villari, eds., Rowman & Littlefield, 2000); Violence in the Lives of Black Women: Battered, Black, and Blue (C. M. West, Ph.D., Ed. Haworth Press: Binghamton, NY, 2003); INCITE: The Color of Violence (various eds., South End Press, 2006); The Black Scholar (special ‘Black Women’s Activism’ edition – Jennifer Hamer, Ph.D., and Helen Neville, Ph.D., eds., Summer 2006); Shout Out: Women of Color Respond to Violence (Maria Ochoa, Ph.D., & Barbara Ige, Ph.D. Eds., Seal Press, 2008); Savoring The Salt: The Legacy of Toni Cade Bambara (Linda Holmes and Cheryl Wall, eds., Temple University Press, 2007); and WHO SHOULD BE FIRST? Feminists Speak Out on the 2008 Presidential Campaign (Johnnetta Betsch Cole and Beverly Guy-Sheftall, eds., SUNY Press, 2010); and Black Feminist and Womanist Pedagogies: When the Personal is Political and Academic (Gary Lemons and Aaronette M. White, eds., SUNY Press, forthcoming)
Ms. Simmons is a proud new member of the editorial collective of The Feminist Wire. Additionally, she blogs at AfroLez®femcentric Perspectives, Ms. magazine, and Liberation from Within. Follow her on twitter at @AfroLez and @InnerLiberation; and connect with her on Facebook.
Filmography
Breaking Silences: A Supplemental Video To NO! © 2008, USA,
Color/Digital Video/112 minutes
For Women of Rage and Reason © 2006, USA,
Color/Digital Video/4:45 minutes
NO! © 2006, USA,
Color/Digital Video/94 minutes
NO! A Work-In-Progress © 1997, 2000, 2002, USA,
Color/Digital Video/8 minutes, 20 minutes, and 74 minutes
In My Father’s House © 1996, USA,
Color/Video/15 minutes
Silence…Broken © 1993, USA,
Color/Video/8 minutes
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