Beyond access to contraception and abortion, the Reproductive justice movement challenges us to consider broad access of reproductive care, affirmative bodily autonomy, and self-determined parenthood as essential aspects of autonomy and justice. Bodily Autonomy & Care brings together reproductive justice organizers and filmmakers who are collaboratively creating short films that center and affirm unapologetic feminism with love and dignity.
ASL, CART (English) provided.
Featuring:
MALA Forever is a radical feminist film & digital studio. We are a home for bold revolutionary storytelling that dismantles systems of oppression and cultivates liberation, love, and abundance. MALA was Co-Founded by Jessie Levandov & Nina Reyes Rosenberg.
Jessie Levandov is a queer director, writer, creative producer and founding partner of radical feminist creative studio Mala Forever. Her award winning work is both tender and defiant, spans mediums such as narrative, documentary, music video, fine art, and fashion, and centers stories that uplift queer intimacy and joy. Her queer coming of age film BABY won the Grand Jury Prize at Outfest film festival, and premiered as a Vimeo Staff Pick. Her work has been featured at venues such as The Guggenheim Lab, Slamdance, Rooftop Films, Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Fotografiska NY, and the Leslie Lohman Museum. As a community-based artist and educator, Jessie is deeply invested in storytelling as a means of community organizing, healing, and collective liberation. She is the former Director of Youth Documentary Workshop at New York City’s Educational Video Center where she designed and facilitated intensive, free documentary filmmaking programs for low-income high school aged youth. She has facilitated community arts programming in NYC public schools, shelters, arts organizations, and at Allied Media Conference in Detroit. Jessie holds a BFA in Film & Television from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and is based in Brooklyn, New York.
Nina Reyes Rosenberg is a queer feminist Chicana-Jewish filmmaker, writer, artist, and cultural strategist. She is a founding partner of radical feminist creative studio Mala Forever. Her original screenplay La Paz has been honored by the Latino Screenwriting Project, and her short films Organism and Invisible Men have played for diverse audiences around the world. With over a decade of experience as an independent media creator and in-house producer at Portal A, Change.org, and the Bayview-Hunters Point Center for Arts and Technology (BAYCAT), her videos have reached millions online and catalyzed activist social justice movements and brands alike. Her fine art painting, installation, and curatorial works have exhibited at Bay Area institutions such as Mission Cultural Center for the Arts, SOMArts, Incline Gallery, and Not Ur Baby. Born and raised in San Francisco, she holds a BFA in Film and Television Production from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and is based in Los Angeles.
Coco Peila is a Bay Area bred Hip Hop & Alt-R&B Afro Diaspora flex. She’s shared stages with artists and leaders such as Talib Kweli, Zion I, Ledisi, The Pharcyde, and President Obama. Her work has been featured by KMEL, The East Bay Express, KQED Arts & Culture, The Kennedy Center, Stanford, Yale, The New Yorker, in the Museum of African Diaspora. The MC, vocalist, songwriter, producer, and cultural organizer developed her irresistible sound while working in the artistic activism and anti-oppression facilitation world, including serving as Director of Hip Hop & Climate Justice at Oakland-based youth-driven Climate Justice organization Youth vs. Apocalypse, participating in the Women’s Earth Alliance’s 2021 U.S. Accelerator For Women Environmental Leaders, and founding BlackGold Movement, a grassroots intersectional Black feminist Hip Hop organization invested in the complete liberation of all people created with the mission to reverse the flow of resources from the West back to Africa along the transatlantic slave trade routes through Hip Hop, storytelling, & music of the African diaspora. BGM’s most recent initiative, #IAmJaneRoe launched in partnership with Urgent Action Fund For Women’s Human Rights in response to the SCOTUS decision to overturn the landmark ruling Roe Vs. Wade.
Moderator
Dani McClain is an award-winning journalist who reports on race, parenting and reproductive health. McClain’s writing has appeared in outlets including The New York Times, TIME and The Atlantic. McClain is a Puffin Fellow at Type Media Center and a contributing writer at The Nation. She was a staff reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and worked as a strategist with organizations including Color of Change and Drug Policy Alliance. Her book, We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood, was published in 2019 by Bold Type Books and shortlisted in 2020 for a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.