Coming Full Circle with NO! A Documentary About Rape

February 25, 2008

Almost since the conception of the idea for the documentary that has evolved into NO!, I’ve been on the international road raising awareness about rape and sexual assault; and the critical non-negotiable need to end it.

In June 1995, my sister-survivor-comrade Janelle White, who was a graduate student at the time, brought me to University of Michigan for my very first paid NO! speaking engagement. At that time, I hardly had any footage. What I had was a vision and a commitment, as a survivor of incest and rape, to use the moving image to address a global atrocity, through the herstories, testimonies, scholarship, activism, poetry, music, and dance of predominantly African-American women.

Little did I know that my vision and commitment would be tested over and over and over again on multiple seen and unseen levels. Nor did I know that it would take a full 11-years before my vision would wo/manifest.

The funds received from that first paid engagement enabled me to film Essex Hemphill perform his very powerful and (unfortunately) timeless poem “To Some Supposed Brothers,”which is featured in his book ground breaking book of poetry and prose Ceremonies. Five months later, Brother Essex made his physical transition into the metaphysical world due to complications resulting from AIDS. Brother Essex transitioned eleven years before NO! was officially released. And yet through the power of film/video, Essex lives on, not only in NO! but through cinematic masterpieces produced and directed by (the late) Marlon Riggs, Isaac Julien, and Shari Frilot.

Almost 13-years later, I came full circle when I returned to the University of Michigan in January 2008 to screen my completed, award-winning, internationally acclaimed documentary NO!. My return to the University of Michigan began in June 2007 with my meeting Erika McCollum and Puneet Sohdi two fierce feminist activists in the anti-sexual violence movement, who are undergraduate students at the University of Michigan, at the very radical and not to be missed Allied Media Conference. When I met them, they were in organizing and strategizing mode about bringing me and NO! to the University of Michigan. Through Erika and Puneet, I met Alexis M. Watts who, on behalf of Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center, worked tirelessly in collaboration with many of her anti-sexual violence activists/comrades to bring me to University of Michigan.

The travesty about coming full circle with NO! is that it is as relevant and critically needed as a completed feature length documentary in 2008, as it was when it was when it was barely a work-in-progress in 2005. The flip side of this sobering reality is that there are more and more survivors, activists, and/or advocates of all ages, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations who working tirelessly to end all forms of sexual violence.