Zeinabu irene Davis (born April 13, 1961) is an American filmmaker and professor in the Department of Communication[2] at the University of California, San Diego. Her works in film include narrative, documentary and experimental film.[3]

Zeinabu irene Davis
Davis at the University of California, San Diego, 2010
Born	(1961-04-13) April 13, 1961 (age 61)[1] Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Alma mater	Brown University, University of California, Los Angeles
Occupation	Director, producer, professor
Years active	1982–present
Spouse(s)	Marc Arthur Chéry

Personal life, education, and career

Born in Philadelphia, Zeinabu irene Davis gravitated towards arts, "theater and education".[4] With a Catholic school background, Davis studied at Brown University, then later traveled to Kenya and studied there until the government shut down the university after some students had participated in political protest. In Kenya she met Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and learned about the different peoples of Kenya and how they are underrepresented or misrepresented in film]].[5] She pursued her first master's degree in 1983 focusing on African studies, later receiving a Master of Fine Arts in film and video production from UCLA in 1989. She has received numerous grants and fellowships from such sources as the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Film Institute and the National Endowment for the Arts.[6] She has taught at many colleges, including Antioch College and Northwestern University, but has more recently moved to teach at UC San Diego, where she currently serves as a Professor of Communication.[1]

Films

As a filmmaker, her films have been categorized as belonging to the genre of Black feminism due to the ways she incorporates the unique experiences of African American women. According to film scholar Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Davis believes that black filmmakers are "developing a new genre that constitutes a black aesthetic".[7] Furthermore, Davis was part of the L.A. Rebellion, which was a movement involving independent black filmmakers (who attended UCLA) aiming to reproduce alternative, humanizing, and more accurate images of black people unlike classical Hollywood cinema. From her experience of being part of this movement, Davis feels passionately about working within groups or organizations, especially as a beginner. She believes that the dynamic and different perspective help filmmakers grow and develop their unique styles.^{[citation needed]}

Awards

Her film Compensation won the Gordon Parks Directing Award from the Independent Feature Project in New York.[8] It was also screened at the Sundance Festival in 2000.[8] It tells a parallel story of two deaf black women, one at the turn of the century and one in the later 20th century.[8] She also won awards from the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and the National Black Programming Consortium for Cycles (1989), an experimental short film. In addition, her works such as A Period Piece (1991), A Powerful Thang (1991), Mother of a River (1995) and Compensation (1999) "continued to garner her awards from numerous organizations and festivals".[1] In 2017, her film "Spirits of Rebellion" was awarded the Best Documentary Feature Film at the San Diego Film Awards.[9]

Filmography

References