Atlanta-based filmmaker Ayoka Chenzira on being invited into the Academy and 30 years of Alma’s Rainbow

Filmmaker Ayoka Chenzira remembers screening her self-funded, independent feature debut Alma’s Rainbow in Atlanta during the Black Arts Festival in the ‘90s. 30 years after its original release in 1994, the film is set to screen here again at the Plaza Theatre on July 25. The screening, a part of the Audio Video Club’s “Cin·e·logue” film club, will take place exactly one month after Chenzira was one of the roughly 487 artists and executives invited to join The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

In recent years, the filmmaker and former Spelman College professor has worked as a director on television shows such as OWN’s Queen Suga r, FX on Hulu’s Kindred , and MGM+’s Beacon 23 . It’s a notable shift for a woman who spent much of her career working as an independent filmmaker at a time when a Black woman telling stories about people who look like her was much rarer. Chenzira’s indie work, including Alma’s Rainbow , has received renewed attention, too. In 2022, Milestone Films restored the coming-of-age film, which centers around a family of three Black women in Brooklyn, in 4K. The film, along with the director’s 1984 animated short Hair Piece: A Film for Nappy Headed People has been praised by critics and fans for its poignant perspective that still feels timely even decades after its initial release.

Courtesy of Milestone Film & Video

Despite constant travel that often took her away from the city, Chenzira moved to Atlanta to work as a professor at Spelman in 2001. Prior to her retirement last year, the filmmaker spent nearly a decade working there as the division chair for the arts. In this role, she brought two new majors —documentary filmmaking and photography—to the university.

Ahead of Thursday’s screening of Alma’s Rainbow , we spoke with the filmmaker and former professor about joining the Academy and her work to portray the experiences of Black woman on screen:

You were invited to become a new member of the Academy about a month ago. Can you talk a little about that? Was that a career goal of yours?
It is through an application process and then they have a process on their end as to whether or not they want to invite you. Years ago, that was not something that was really on my radar.

What do you think it was that shifted for you? For so long you worked independently and did work outside of the traditional Hollywood systems.
I think the question is what shifted in the Academy to open the doors for people like me, people who had been producing work independently for a very long time. My answer to that would be, filmmakers like myself had to wait for a new generation of Black thought leaders and creators and historians and critics to be born who could put our work in a context that was understood differently. I also think that things like the murder of George Foyd [and] Black Lives Matter have sensitized some people to things that have been overlooked and undervalued.

Some of your films, such as Alma’s Rainbow and Hair Piece , have been restored, celebrated, and critically acclaimed recently. Did you ever think about your work having such a long span and remaining so timely?
No. For me, it’s been about, What’s the idea, what’s the story, [and] what’s the best way to tell it? Raise the money. Put it in film festivals. Get a distribution deal. And literally start all over again. The idea of longevity and legacy was not a part of my creative imagination at the time that I was making the work.

Alma’s Rainbow was your feature debut. When you rewatch it today, is there something that resonates with you today versus when you watched it 30 years ago?
I hadn’t seen the film in many, many, many, many years before it was remastered and shown at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. I hadn’t seen it on the large screen since, I don’t know, the ‘90s. When I got to see it on the large screen again, what stuck out to me was that each of those women, they’re wrestling with their dreams and how to make their dreams come true. As I go through life and meet people, I’m like, Ahh, they are trying to make their dreams come true, no matter what those dreams are .

Courtesy of Milestone Film & Video

Sometimes we think of critical acclaim as proof of success, but were you already feeling accomplished in your work before this recent interest?
I never looked to other people to identify what success looked like for me. I grew up at a time when there were very, very few African Americans—and particularly African American women—making films of any kind, let alone animation features, documentaries, experimental narratives, etc. There wasn’t a larger community to think about success in the way you think about Hollywood success.

The films that I loved that came out of Hollywood, for the most part, did not have people that looked like you and me. They were not produced and directed and written [by African Americans], or the costumes or production designers [weren’t people who] looked like you and me. Very early on, there was a community that I hung with in New York of independent filmmakers. We supported each other, and that was really satisfying validation. The idea of having a career in Hollywood did not dawn on me. It also was not a primary interest of mine, in part because the kinds of stories that I was interested in telling, I didn’t see those kinds of stories being supported in any way.

I believe you’ve previously said when you were in film school, it wasn’t a diverse class. You eventually became a professor yourself. Was that at all inspired by your own film school experiences?
No. I was making independent films in New York. There was a filmmaker, she’s since passed, her name was Kathleen Collins. She did [films] called Losing Ground [and] The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy . She was also a playwright [and] a novelist. She was extraordinary. She was also my daughter’s godmother. She taught at The City College of New York. She was going to go on sabbatical and she called me and asked me if I would take her place. What I didn’t know is that she was dying. She was very interested in me teaching in the Academy. She said, Y ou like to do all of these very strange, wacky experimental films, and you’re not going to be able to feed my godchild doing these movies. So you need to think about having a parallel career. I went to teach for her for what I thought would be a semester. And then she passed away.

What I didn’t know, and [what] I think a lot of people don’t know about teaching, is that it really is facilitating a dialogue around knowledge sharing. It’s not about you standing up in front of a class and saying, Here’s what I know. Take notes. That kind of dialogue with the students was very, very attractive to me. I have always learned as much from my students as I think that I hopefully have given to them.

You were a professor at Spelman and then division chair for the arts. Can you talk about why it was important for you to create documentary filmmaking and photography majors at the HBCU?
For me, it’s a dream come true. As we grow in the Academy, we recognize that there are certain disciplines that have a lot to offer, even within the context of a liberal arts institution. And documentary filmmaking and photography are two such knowledge bases that really have a lot to say [about] what it means to be in the world. To see those [majors], not only in an HBCU but a place like Spelman College, which is a college that was built for the success of African American women . . . they have something to say in documentary filmmaking and photography.

That was very special to be able to make that happen, along with other members of the community.

What was it like working on the reimagining of Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred for FX on Hulu? That’s a story that’s so well known and beloved.
Hot. The story jumps back and forth between two different time periods. And when it’s in the past, it [was] actually filmed in Georgia [on] a large farm. Everything that you see in front of the camera is built from scratch. The house is built from scratch. There’s not a lot of coverage. You really feel like, Oh my gosh, I’m really in a different time period with no place to run or hide .

That experience was powerful. You have to do a lot of breath exercises because there’s so much trauma involved with the experience of the lead character. And you’re dealing with issues of history, race, and enslavement every day for long hours of the day. Luckily I had met Octavia [Butler]. I’d had numerous conversations with her. Working on Kindred felt like a real chance to honor her and her work. And the creator of that particular show, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, he’s an Octavia Butler scholar. I was so happy that he was able to make one of his dreams come true and that I was able to participate in it.

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