Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project - QWOCMAP

Results: The QWOCMAP Filmmaker Training Program provides rigorous professional training, coaching, and resources through intensive and fun workshops. Over 452+ films have been created through this award-winning program. Its investment in the leadership capacity, technical skills and artistic knowledge of our marginalized community is worth $500,000 annually. It creates profound impact by making queer women of color, gender nonconforming and transgender people of color visible and vocal in the most expensive art form in the world. The free annual San Francisco International Queer Women of Color Film Festival fosters movement building by connecting films to social justice issues and grassroots organizations, and engaging artists, activists, academics and audiences. The boutique film Distribution Program creates new audiences for QWOCMAP Films, which have received jury and audience awards, and critical acclaim at international film festivals on every continent except Antarctica. QWOCMAP deepens civic engagement by illustrating conditions that affect our community and encourages a shift toward collective action.

Target demographics: queer women of color (cisgender & transgender), and nonbinary, gender nonconforming and transgender people of color (of any orientation)

Direct beneficiaries per year: 50 filmmakers, 1,000+ audience members & 10,000 people around the world

Geographic areas served: across the U.S.

Programs: QWOCMAP uses film to shatter stereotypes and bias, reveal the lived truth of inequality, address the vital, intersecting issues that concern multiple populations, and build understanding and community around art and social justice. Founded in 2000, QWOCMAP creates, exhibits and distributes high-quality films that authentically reflect the lives of queer women of color, gender nonconforming and transgender people of color, and address the vital social justice issues that concern our multiple communities. We actively invest in, develop, and nurture creativity and leadership of our community through free programs that prioritize low income, immigrant, young, elder, and disabled members. We build community through high-impact films, public discourse and profound engagement. We strengthen social justice movements by nurturing our community as leaders that incorporate the power of art as cultural resistance, resilience and renewal.