In the “Blaxploitation” films of the 1970s, a certain kind of woman ruled the screen–a righteous, merciless woman who stopped at nothing in her drive for vengeance. A castrating bitch–often literally. Stylish and deadly, with names like Foxy Brown, Cleopatra Jones, and Coffy, these characters lent big-screen visibility to African-American women. But the price for that visibility was high, notes video artist Ayanna U’Dongo.
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“Was this Aunt Jemima on steroids?” U’Dongo wonders with a laugh. “You have this buxom, beautiful black woman who can work her way out of almost any situation, always getting caught up in a sexual furor of some kind, getting out of it, and rescuing her man or her brother, always rescuing men, always in a heterosexual perspective, reacting not very well if at all to women. It was like all this misogynistic weaponry coming through.”
U’Dongo began teaching video production to teenage girls on a volunteer basis through Street Level Youth Media, a program that puts out issue-oriented tapes such as Sync Sisters With Style, which will be shown this weekend as part of the Women in the Director’s Chair festival. With a confrontational camera zeroing in on its neighborhood subjects, a group of girls take to the street asking blunt questions about sexual values, not wasting time on standard interview small talk. The interviewees match the girls’ candor, particularly one bitter young mother who warns that teen fathers won’t honor their responsibilities.
