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. In Spring 2009 she was an 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,” and began taking embryonic steps on cinematic work post NO! The Rape Documentary. Raised as a Sufi Muslim, Ms. Simmons is featured in Farah Nousheen’s award-winning documentary Nazrah: A Muslim Woman’s Perspective. Ms. Simmons is also featured in Tiona McClodden’s internationally acclaimed award-winning documentary black./womyn.:conversations with lesbians of African descent.
Presently, she is in post-production on a documentary short about the first 10-day Vipassana Meditation course, as taught by S.N. Goenka, held in India for people of African heritage worldwide in December 2009.
For almost 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 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. In 2006, NO! won the Audience Choice Award and a Juried Award at the San Diego Women Film Festival. Most recently NO! won the juried Best Documentary Award at the 2008 India International Women’s Film Festival.
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 ‘NO!’ begins.”
NO! is a Black feminist educational organizing tool, which is being used in the global movement to end violence against women and children. Since its official release in 2006, NO! has been screened and distributed to racially and ethnically diverse audiences at:
- film festivals
- community centers
- colleges/universities
- high schools
- correctional facilities
- rape crisis centers
- battered women’s shelters
- conferences
- government agencies
- non-governmental organizations
throughout the United States, in Canada, Italy, Spain, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Rwanda, Kenya, Nepal, South Africa, Jordan, Burkina Faso, Peru, Colombia, Guadeloupe, Venezuela, Brazil, India, France, England, Malaysia, Turkey, and Mexico.
The National Sexual Violence Resource Center-the comprehensive center for information, research, and emerging policy on sexual violence intervention and prevention in the United States–designated screenings and discussions of NO! in community settings as the Featured Event during their 2007 Sexual Assault Awareness Month Campaign.
Through a major grant from the The Ford Foundation, Ms. Simmons, coordinated the French (Carole Crawford), Spanish (Evelyne Laurent-Perrault), and Portuguese (Maristela Smith, Rachel E. Harding, Niede Bolinger) subtitling of NO!; produced and directed the two-hour Breaking Silences: A Supplemental Video to NO!, which was photographed by Joan Brannon; and edited and composed by Monica N. Dillon; and she was the creative and editorial director of Unveiling the Silence: NO! The Rape Documentary Study Guide, which was co-created by Salamishah Tillet, Ph.D., and Rachel Afi Quinn
Ms. Simmons 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 Canada, France, England, Croatia, Hungary, The Netherlands, Mexico, Kenya, Malaysia, and South Africa.
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)
In addition to her 2009 Artist-in-Residence at the University of Chicago, Ms. Simmons is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including the 2008 Philadelphia Black Gay Pride Legends Award, the 2007 International Federation of Black Prides Award; the 2007 Media Award from the Institute on Domestic Violence in the African-American Community; the 2006 D.C. Rape Crisis Center’s Visionary Award; a 2006 grant from the Ford Foundation to support the international educational marketing and distribution of NO!; the National Sexual Violence Resource Center ‘s 2006 National Award for Outstanding Response to and Prevention of Sexual Violence; Leeway Foundation’s inaugural 2005 Transformation Award; a 2005 Artist-in-Residence at Spelman College’s Digital Moving Image Salon; and several production/post production grants from the Valentine Foundation, the Bread and Roses Community Fund, Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, the Delaware Valley Legacy Fund of the Philadelphia Foundation, the Open Meadows Fund, the Women’s Way Discretionary Fund, and the Gloria Steinem Fund of the Ms. Foundation for Women.
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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