Ayoka Chenzira

Ayoka "Ayo" Chenzira (born November 8, 1953) is an independent African-American producer, film director, television director, animator, writer, experimental filmmaker, and transmedia storyteller.

She was also invited to show her early films at Lincoln Center as part of a celebration of Black filmmakers titled " Tell it like it is : Black independents in New York, 1968–1986. and the touring exhibition, We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965–1985.

She is the first African American woman animator and one of a handful of Black experimental filmmakers working since the late 1970s.

She has earned international acclaim for her experimental, documentary, animation, and cross-genre filmmaking productions.

Her work, as well as her efforts as one of the first African American woman film educators, have led some in the press to describe her as a media activist for social justice and challenging stereotype representations of African Americans in the mainstream media.

She received her B.F.A. degree in film production from New York University, where her thesis film was Syvilla: They Dance To Her Drum (1979), "a short film that documented the African American concert dancer, Syvilla Fort, who was the vital link between the Katherine Dunham and Alvin Ailey periods of modern dance and who was Chenzira's dance teacher".

She is the first African American to have earned her PhD in Digital Media Arts at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Chenzira is the Division Chair of the Arts at Spelman College and one of the first African Americans to teach film production in higher education.

Chenzira was one of a group of young Black filmmakers who worked outside of mainstream financing and production systems for films.

In the mid-1980s, Chenzira formed Red Carnelian, a New-York based production and distribution company focusing on media productions depicting life and culture of African Americans.

The company has a successful production division as well as a distribution division, Black Indie Classics.

Chenzira was the Chair of the Department of Media and Communication Arts at the City College of New York, where she managed programs in advertising, public relations, journalism, film and video; she also co-created their first M.F.A in media arts production graduate program.

Chenzira was an arts administrator and lobbyist for independent cinema.

She was a founding board member of Production Partners in New York, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the visibility of African-American as well as Hispanic and Latino American films.

From 1981 to 1984, Chenzira was the programs director of the Black Filmmakers Foundation, where she helped promote and distribute black films.

Hair Piece: A Film for Nappyheaded People is a 1984 satirical short film incorporating mixed media and animation to describe the emotional connection of Black women and their hair.

Chenzira said the film was inspired by the question, "Why is kinky hair seen as broken?"

Chenzira, noted for her feminist topics, points out "self image for African-American women living in a society where beautiful hair is viewed as hair that blows in the wind".

The pioneering short animated film tackles matters of space and personal rights for Black women and their bodies.

The award-winning ten-minute, 16-mm color animation contrasts the hair experiences and culture of Black women against white beauty standards.

Chenzira depicts the salon locale as an engaging space, calling for an initiation in scholarly and film discourse about Black hair culture and Black female agency.

She was key in providing support for Charles Lane’s award-winning feature Sidewalk Stories (1989).

She has also served as a media panelist for the Jerome Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Her contributions along with 14 other panelists for the Minority Task Force on Public Television resulted in the first Multicultural Public Television Fund.

In the mid nineties, Chenzira was consultant to the M-Net Television of South Africa.

She taught screenwriting and directing in Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, and South Africa.

Chenzira is most well known for her 35mm feature film Alma’s Rainbow (1993), the drama MOTV, animated films Hair Piece: A Film for Nappyheaded People (1984) and Zajota & the Boogie Spirit (1989).

She was one of the first African-American women to produce a feature-length film, Alma's Rainbow (1993). In 1984, she was one of seven writer/directors selected for the Sundance Institute.

In 2001, Chenzira was invited to serve as the first William and Camille Cosby Endowed Professor in the Arts at Spelman College in Atlanta.

There, she created and directed the award-winning Digital Moving Image Salon (DMIS), a year-long research and documentary production course.

She also created and served as director of Oral Narratives and Digital Technology, a joint venture between Spelman College and the Durham Institute of Technology (DIT) where she designed and taught documentary filmmaking primarily for Zulu students at DIT.

Many of her recent works as a transmedia storyteller play with the increasingly digital media world through art that combines material objects with digital environments, and interactive films including Chenzira and her daughter HaJ's collaboration on HERadventure (2013).

Born in Philadelphia, Ayoka Chenzira was raised by her mother in North Philadelphia, living in the same building where her mother owned a beauty salon.

She grew up playing the piano, cello, field hockey and studying ballet.

Chenzira was exposed to art from a young age, including dance lessons, opera and theatre visits as a child.

Her mother made reimagined designer clothing for Ayoka, and strongly encouraged her to pursue her artistic ambitions.

She has been working with moving images since she was 17.

After graduating from high school, Chenzira studied film and photography at The College of New Rochelle in Westchester, New York.

She accomplished her M.A. degree in education at Columbia University.

in 2015, Chenzira's films are in several notable permanent collections including those at Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.