Comfrey Films

About

Comfrey Films is a Film Training Program and Production Studio designed to launch Black trans, gender nonconforming, and intersex (TGNCI) storytellers into independent filmmaking and to tell stories that humanize, protect, and mobilize our communities at large.

Comfrey Films is focused on cultural organizing and narrative power at the exact moment when truthful, community-rooted media is under threat. We’re developing the next generation of storytellers, journalists, and media makers because our stories are our most powerful tool for collective healing, culture shifting, and systemic transformation. Our work is an ode to the comfrey plant used for wound closure.

Comfrey Films was founded in Durham, NC by Joie Lou Shakur who utilized their personal resources to fuel their vision that the lives and stories of Black Trans people become unforgettable.

We began with a simple mission: To train the next generation of Black Trans storytellers and filmmakers, leverage our brand to get Black Trans filmmakers paid to produce media projects in their communities, and pay Black Trans film fellows to work on internal media projects that further the stories of Black Trans people globally. The impact of our work now has meant that we’ve contributed significantly to the infrastructure and ecosystem of alternative media, particularly an ecosystem of media work that directly impacts Black trans, queer, immigrant, disabled communities from the South.