The Miss Black America beauty contest is a competition for young African-American women. The pageant has garnered the support of artists, activists and performers including Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, and Oprah Winfrey. After 40 years, in 2009 the pageant had a "kick off" in Washington, D.C. to rebrand the competition. The first teen winner was Ashley Anglin. The first runner-up teen was Monet Jackson, a resident of Mitchellville, MD; and Destiny Welch, second runner-up and also an MD resident. The adult winner was DC native and MD resident, Miss Kamilla Collier-Mullin. The first runner-up Miss Cherie A. Bryant, a northern Virginia resident; and the second runner up was Miss Janesia Simmons in the adult pageant. It is known as the most divisive pageant in the world.
Kansas City is a 1996 American crime film directed by Robert Altman, and starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Miranda Richardson, Harry Belafonte, Michael Murphy and Steve Buscemi. The musical score of Kansas City is integrated into the film, with modern-day musicians recreating the Kansas City jazz of 1930s.
Love, Sex and Eating the Bones is a 2003 Canadian romantic comedy film directed and written by Sudz Sutherland featuring a mostly African American and Black Canadian leading cast. It premiered and played twice at the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Canadian First Feature Film.
Lucas Bryant is a Canadian-American actor. Bryant is most well known for his role as Nathan Wuornos in the Syfy TV channel series Haven (2010–2015).
Eagle Pennell was an American independent filmmaker. His film The Whole Shootin' Match (1978) is often credited with inspiring Robert Redford to start the Sundance Institute.
Travis "Sudz" Sutherland is a Canadian film director and screenwriter. His credits include the films Doomstown, Love, Sex and Eating the Bones, Guns, Speakers for the Dead and Home Again, as well as episodes of Drop the Beat, Da Kink in My Hair, Degrassi: The Next Generation, Wild Roses, Jozi-H, Reign, She's the Mayor, Designated Survivor, Shoot the Messenger, Murdoch Mysteries, Frankie Drake Mysteries, Batwoman and Superman & Lois.
Jennifer Lynn Connelly is an American actress. She began her career as a child model before making her acting debut in the 1984 crime film Once Upon a Time in America. After a few more years of modeling, she began to concentrate on acting, starring in a variety of films including the horror film Phenomena (1985), the musical fantasy film Labyrinth (1986), the romantic comedy Career Opportunities (1991), and the period superhero film The Rocketeer (1991). She received praise for her performance in the science fiction film Dark City (1998) and playing a drug addict in Darren Aronofsky's drama film Requiem for a Dream (2000).
She's the Mayor is a Canadian television sitcom which aired on Vision TV in 2011. The show stars Janet-Laine Green as Iris Peters, a woman in her 60s who is newly elected as the mayor of the fictional city of Fairfax.
Katerina Cizek is a Canadian documentary director and a pioneer in digital documentaries. She is the Artistic Director, Co-Founder and Executive Producer of the Co-Creation Studio at MIT Open Documentary Lab.
Douglas Arrowsmith is a Canadian film director and writer. He has produced award-winning documentaries for CBC Television, music videos, and feature-length films for BBC Four, The Movie Network and HBO Canada.
Jennifer Baichwal is a Canadian documentary filmmaker, writer and producer.
Home Again is a 2012 Canadian drama film directed by Sudz Sutherland, shot primarily in Trinidad and Tobago and set in Kingston, Jamaica, about three people who have been deported back to Jamaica, despite having lived in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom for most of their lives.
Andrea Dorfman is a Canadian screenwriter and film director based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She directed the Emmy Award films Flawed (2010) and Big Mouth (2012). Dorfman is one of the four co-creators of Blowhard. She mainly creates short and feature films but also works on mini-documentaries for the Equality Effect, a human rights organization. She is currently working on The Playground in collaboration with Jennifer Deyell.
Judith Rosemary (Sparks) Crawley was a Canadian film producer, cinematographer, director, and screenwriter. She and her husband Frank Radford "Budge" Crawley co-founded the production company Crawley Films in 1939.
Shoot the Messenger is a Canadian political and crime drama television series that aired on CBC Television from October 10, 2016 to December 5, 2016. The series was not renewed for a second season.
Marina Zenovich is an American filmmaker known for her biographical documentaries. Her films include LANCE, Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind, Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic and Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which won two Emmy awards.
Karen Robinson is a British-Canadian film, television, and stage actress. She won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Performance in a Guest Role in a Drama Series at the 7th Canadian Screen Awards in 2019 for her appearance on the television series Mary Kills People. She also won a 2021 Screen Actors Guild Award as part of the Schitt's Creek cast.
Shasha Nakhai is a Filipino-Iranian Canadian film director, most noted as co-director with Rich Williamson of the 2021 film Scarborough. The film won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Picture, and Nakhai and Williamson won the award for Best Director, at the 10th Canadian Screen Awards in 2022.
Subjects of Desire is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Jennifer Holness and released in 2021. Nominally jumping off from the 50th anniversary of the Miss Black America pageant in 2018, the film is an exploration of the relationship between African-American and Black Canadian society with the broader cultural concept of beauty standards.
BLK: An Origin Story is a Canadian documentary television series, which aired in 2022 on History. Created, directed and produced by Sudz Sutherland and Jennifer Holness for Hungry Eyes Film and Television, the series explores Black Canadian history.
