VC and COLOR CONGRESS Present: Resistance & Joy

In celebration of Pride Month, Visual Communications is partnering with Color Congress for the Resistance & Joy Screening Tour and to present a community screening in Los Angeles!

The Resistance & Joy Screening Tour is a bold new initiative presenting a powerful slate of short documentaries, all directed by filmmakers of color. These films explore urgent and deeply personal themes, from LGBTQ+ rights and intergenerational healing to advocacy, cultural preservation, and the resilience of communities reclaiming spaces.

WHEN
Saturday, June 21, 2025 @ 2PM-4PM

WHERE
Democracy Center @ JANM
100 N Central Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012

FILM LINEUP
Reclaiming Identity: Stories of LGBTQ+ love and resilience, intergenerational healing, and communities reclaiming their spaces. These films center personal and collective journeys of self-discovery, healing, and belonging. Through intergenerational storytelling, bold artistic expression, and lived experiences, filmmakers reclaim narratives that have historically been erased or silenced.

AMMA'S PRIDE 
Directed by Shiva Krish
Amma's Pride chronicles Valli's trials and tribulations as she watches her trans daughter, Srija, fall in love, marry and fight for state recognition of her marriage in a traditional small town in South India. When societal pressures push Srija's marriage to the edge, Valli clings to the hope of a miracle.

ASIAN BITCHES SPEAK
Directed by Janet Chen
After generations of cultural silence, years of pandemic anxiety, and one anti-Asian hate crime, queer filmmaker Janet and her retired single mom Diana embark on a mental health discovery road trip across California. Along the way, they spill the tea about their family history, and start the journey to healing.

HANDS PERFORMANCE
Directed by Rashaad Newsome
Hands Performance takes its title from the well-known element of vogue fem, highlighting a dancer’s ability to tell a story with their hands and showcasing their musicality. Hands Performance continues Rashaad’s exploration of mapping Black cultural production as a form of movement research, data storage, and collective wayfinding. Working with a team of Black Queer ASL interpreters, various vogue fem performers, flex dancers, and motion capture technologists, Newsome translated his original poetry into a movement dataset exhibiting the uniquely Black and Queer aspects of sign language. Newsome then integrated this movement into Being the Digital Griot, a Non-binary Artificial Intelligence Newsome premiered in his exhibition Assembly at the Park Avenue Armory Drill Hall in February 2022. The film combines stunning visuals from a speculative future with a highly energetic score filled with booming bass, synthetic snares, snaps, claps, and glitchy computer sounds, resulting in a futuristic sonic experience. As Being performs, they move seamlessly between signing and dance, exhibiting uniquely Black and Queer kinesics that signal the immaterial expressivity inherent to Black American life.

KA ʻĀʻUMEʻUME: NAVIGATING HOME
Directed by M. Kaleipumehana Cabral
Six Kānaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiians) share their voyages in and out of diaspora. Their collective moʻolelo (story) wades through hope, grief, wisdom, and the effects of the illegal occupation of their homeland. They share the pull they have felt to return to Hawaiʻi and ka ʻāʻumeʻume (the struggle) to stay.

OUT OF FOCUS
Directed by India Martin
Out of Focus is an experimental documentary that explores collectivity, belonging, and the reimagining of family within Black queer life. Through filmed interviews, home movies, and archival images, the film constructs an intimate, nonlinear genealogy of queer kinship—one that resists erasure and centers the quiet intimacies of care, joy, and tenderness beyond traditional frameworks. Rooted in Black queer feminist thought and archival intervention, Out of Focus maps the fluid and ever-evolving nature of kinship, honoring those who claim and create space—whether artistic, political, or personal—as an act of love and self-preservation. Blurring the lines between documentary and experimental cinema, the film is a meditation on home and a visual language of resistance.

TALKING WALLS
Directed by Marcellus Armstrong
Multiple voices reflect on the language, sounds, touch, history and choice of public and private, Black and queer spaces.