About the Series
About the Series
The Arts & Sciences Inclusive Inquiry Speaker Series brings transformational organizations and speakers to our community to explore shared values around DEI, engage with diverse perspectives, and enhance our inclusive teaching and research practices through community dialogue and collaboration.
In alignment with William & Mary's celebration of 2023-2024 as the Year of the Arts, the 2024 series will host a two-day film festival on February 22nd and 23rd featuring Cadence Theatre Company's Sitelines BLM ACTION short films. The festival's keynote speaker is director, writer, producer and William & Mary alumnus, Omar Kamara (Economics, '15). Omar's Mass Ave was selected in 2021 as a finalist at the HBO Short Film Competition at the American Black Film Festival (ABFF). His debut feature African Giants will premiere in 2024 at the Slamdance Film Festival. This event is free and open to the public.
Program Schedule
The Inclusive Inquiry Speaker Series Film Festival will take place in Commonwealth Auditorium in the Sadler Center.
Thursday, February 22, 2024
5:00 p.m. Screening of Sitelines BLM Films:
Break
Bleach
Still Fighting
6:00 p.m. Screening of Mass Ave
6:30 p.m. Q&A with screenwriters Brittany Fisher, Margarette Joyner, dl Hopkins, and Omar S. Kamara
7:00 p.m. Welcome Table
Friday, February 23, 2024
4:30 p.m. Screening of African Giants
6:30 p.m. Keynote and Q&A
7:30 p.m. Reception
![African Giants](/as/about/diversity-equity-inclusion/inclusive-inquiry-film-festival/_images/african-giants.jpg)
African Giants
Screenwriter and Director: Omar S. Kamara
Year: 2024
Runtime: 106 min.
Over a weekend visit in Los Angeles, two first-generation Sierra Leonean American brothers navigate the changing dynamics of brotherhood after a surprise announcement.
![Mass Ave Short Poster](/as/about/diversity-equity-inclusion/inclusive-inquiry-film-festival/_images/mass-ave_custom1288x860.jpg)
Mass Ave
Screenwriter and Director: Omar S. Kamara
Year: 2021
Runtime: 21 min.
Over a day of landscaping work, a first-generation Sierra Leonean American and his traditional immigrant father have their tense relationship and different outlooks on life transformed irreversibly when they are racially profiled by police.
Omar Kamara
Writer/Director Omar S. Kamara is a first-generation Sierra Leonean American, Virginia native, and graduate of the College of William and Mary and AFI. His debut feature film, AFRICAN GIANTS, which he independently wrote, directed, and produced, had its World Premiere at Slamdance Film Festival in 2024 where it won Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature and was picked up by Juno Films for worldwide distribution.
His previous short film, MASS AVE, won the Grand Prize at the DGA Student Film Awards, was named a Finalist in HBO's Short Film Competition at ABFF, and was nominated for the Grand Prix at Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival. The film was licensed by HBO and is currently streaming on HBO Max.
In addition to winning the Franklin J. Schaffner Fellow Award at AFI, he was selected as an inaugural Resident for the Rideback Rise BIPOC Content Accelerator. Kamara’s films touch on his first-generation experiences and strive to highlight and honor the African Diaspora.
Bleach
Screenwriter: Brittany Fisher
Director: Omiyẹmi (Artisia) Green
Year: 2021
Runtime: 15 min.
Bleach is set during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 and filmed at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art’s Rumors of War statue and at Richmond’s African Burial Ground. Three young people in a poetry collective play a game that opens the door for conversation about how to stay safe when racial tension is again on the rise in the former capital of the Confederacy. Bleach is simultaneously a film about the erasure of history and a memorialization to the beauty and humanity of Black people everywhere.
Brittany Fisher
Brittany Fisher (she/her) is an NYC-based playwright with roots in Richmond, VA, and graduate of Juilliard's Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program. Her play How to Bruise Gracefully won the 2021 Kennedy Center Lorraine Hansberry Award and was recognized by the Rosa Parks Award and Paula Vogel Award. Her play Your Regularly Scheduled Programming was a 2022 O’Neill NPC selection and recognized by the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Award. She was a 2018-20 Pipeline New Works Playwriting Fellow, and her work has been featured at and developed with the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, National Black Theatre, Great Plains Theatre Conference, the Alliance Theatre's Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition, Cadence Theatre Company and Virginia Repertory Theatre. She received her B.A. from James Madison University.
Break
Screenwriter and Director: dl Hopkins
Year: 2021
Runtime: 7 min.
Jackson Ward recalls the horrors of a weekend outing to amused coworkers and entertained onlookers. The story plays out in real time in front of the audience as Jackson narrates the event, dinner at a friend’s house, and discovering that the house sits on a plantation. Filmed at the Richmond Slavery Reconciliation Statue and the Historic Westover Plantation, Break explores differing perspectives of the same situation, discovering the communication gap between worlds and the deep-rooted need for reconciliation of our collective truth.
dl Hopkins
dl Hopkins is an award-winning actor, poet, and the former Artistic Director of the African American Repertory Theatre of Virginia. Hopkins is a founder of the Southern Revolutionist Literary Guild (SRLG), a collective of poets and spoken word artists. While serving on the Board of Directors of James River Writers, Hopkins created the Just Poetry Slam, Richmond’s first and longest-running poetry slam. Hopkins is a founding member of the Jazz Actors Theatre established by his mentor, Ernie McClintock, founder of Harlem’s Afro-American Studio for Acting and Speech and the 127th Street Repertory Ensemble.
Still Fighting
Screenwriter and Director: Margarette Joyner
Year: 2021
Runtime: 9 min.
Still Fighting stretches across generations to answer the question: have we really made any progress? After centuries of resistance — through slave revolts, the Civil Rights Movement, and waves of Black Lives Matter — the question remains. Still Fighting speaks to the frustrations and fatigue of young, Black individuals as they continue the struggle to end racial injustice in this country. The work also acknowledges the sacrifices made by ancestors to ensure that the fight can continue today. Within the site-specific context of the Virginia War Memorial, Still Fighting explores the parallels between the Black Lives Matter Movement and previous conflicts—such as the Vietnam War—on the backdrop of a space of memory.
Margarette Joyner
Margarette Joyner (she/her) is a Director, Actress, Poet, Singer, and Costume Designer based in Charlotte, NC. Joyner is a Visiting Professor of Costume Design at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. She graduated with a MFA from VCU after receiving her undergraduate degree from the University of South Alabama. Joyner founded The Heritage Ensemble Theatre Company in 2012 and served as the Artistic/Executive Director for 10 years. She has taught theatre and served as an academic advisor at the university level for six years. In addition to writing several stage plays, Joyner recently co-authored a book, When I Kill Him, Jesus Can Have Him, released through Pecan Tree Publishing. She also served as an Actor Interpreter at Colonial Williamsburg, where she not only performed but wrote several of her own solo programs. She was honored to give voice to those of the enslaved community of Williamsburg's 18th Century. Joyner has designed costumes and props for Cadence Cinema Film & TV’s "Still Fighting," "Bleach," "Break," and "Bloodlines". Of all these accomplishments, her greatest is to have raised a daughter who is a loving human being and her best friend. Says Joyner of her talents, "I am humbled by the fact that God has chosen me to represent His work in so many ways."
Location & Parking
The Inclusive Inquiry Speaker Series Film Festival will take place in Commonwealth Auditorium in the Sadler Center. Parking information for this event is specified below. Please contact Chloe Allen at ceallen01@wm.edu for details or if you have mobility needs related to parking.
- On Thursday, we have a limited number of reserved parking spaces in the Old Dominion parking lot [pdf] for the event.
- On Friday, event parking is free in any Faculty/Staff parking space in the Sadler parking lot [pdf] starting at 4pm.
- W&M Passport Parking is available across campus. Please see Visitor Parking for more details.
- Nearby off-campus parking includes Colonial Williamsburg P6 parking lot located at 410 Francis Street West. First two hours are free and $1 thereafter. Please see their website for details.