But Some of Us Are Brave: A Black Women's Film Festival (1st Edition)

April 10 –11, 2026 | Oshman Hall, Stanford University (355 Roth Way)
Free and open to the public: RSVP at this link 

Presented by Stanford Cinematheque, Stanford Black Studies Collective, Stanford Public Humanities, the Stanford Creative Writing Program, the Department of African and African American History, and the Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Housed in the Department of Art and Art History.  

But Some of Us Are Brave takes its name from the groundbreaking 1982 anthology edited by Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith: All the Men Are Black, All the Women are White, But Some of Us Are Brave. This edited collection insisted that we take the study of Black women's intellectual and creative lives seriously. This two-day film festival honors that call and extends the directive to the screen. Bringing together rarely seen works directed, written, and shaped by black women alongside live discussion about what constitutes black (women's) poetics, this series considers the ineffable relevance of black women’s media histories. From Maya Angelou's earliest works behind the camera to independent media by Bay Area women, the program traces a lineage of black women who made work of self-possession and self-determination before anyone made room for it while also convening independent media makers, curators, programmers, and organizations of the Bay Area. 

The Friday & Saturday films include works by: Maya Angelou & Alexis De Veaux (The Tapestry, Circles), Pratibha Parmar (Place of Rage), Cheryl Fabio (Rainbow Black: The Poet Sarah W. Fabio), and Aarin Burch (Spin Cycle). This will be among the first screenings of The Tapestry and Circles since their preservation in 2021; these teleplays represent an essential moment in public broadcasting which, thanks to producers like the late Barbara Schultz, gave many black women a chance to explore the world behind the camera. 

The program kicks off Friday April 10 at 7 PM with Opening Riffs -- a conversation on black poetics with Denning Visiting Artist Hanif Abdurraqib; sculptor and sonic artist Yétúndé Olágbajú; choreographer and Institute for Diversity in the Arts Artist-in-Residence Amara Tabor-Smith; and will be moderated by Black Studies Collective co-directors Bryn Evans and Kyéra Sterling. 

Day 2 of Some of Us Are Brave engages the screen more directly, beginning with Pratihba Parmar’s A Place of Rage (1991) which offers a prolific assemblage of black women’s anger via interviews with Angela Davis, June Jordan, Trinh Minh-ha and Alice Walker. We then turn to experimental 16mm with Spin Cycle (1991) – a ruminative exploration of black lesbian identity by Oakland-based filmmaker Aarin Burch.

Saturday will also feature Between the Frames, a 1:1 conversation at 3 PM Saturday April 11 with filmmaker Cheryl Fabio (Stanford Documentary Film MFA ’76) whose film about “the Mother of Black Studies” — Sarah W. Fabio — will screen prior. Rather than a traditional Q&A, director Cheryl Fabio joins series programmer Kyéra Sterling for an intimate conversation spanning her time as a graduate filmmaker at Stanford in the 1970s to her current practice. Fabio reflects on a life in images — the forces that shaped her work, the questions that persist, and the spaces between a film and the life that made it. 

Films then begin at 8:15 PM on Friday, April 10 and run from noon until 2:00 PM on Saturday, April 11 with a concluding filmmaker talk with Cheryl Fabio.

The Tapestry and Circles (1976) were made available and preserved by UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by the Women's Film Preservation Fund of New York Women in Film & Television. 

Free and open to the public. Please RSVP at this link, where you will be able to select what portions of the festival you hope to attend. 

For questions, contact Kyéra Sterling at kyera@stanford.edu 

Some of Us Are Brave: A Black Women’s Film Festival 
Film Schedule 

FRIDAY April 10th 
7:00PM – 8:00PM | TALK: Opening Riffs
8:15PM – 10:00PM | The Tapestry & Circles (1976) 

SATURDAY APRIL 11TH 
12:00PM – 1:00PM | A Place of Rage (1991)
1:15PM – 1:30PM | Spin Cycle (1991) with pre-recorded introduction by director 
1:30PM – 2:00PM | Rainbow Black: Poet Sarah Webster Fabio (1976)
3:00PM – 4:00PM | TALK: Between the Frames with Cheryl Fabio 

**Note: Georgia, Georgia (1972), the first theatrically released film written by a Black woman, will no longer screen as part of this program. The film's sole surviving prints are held by the Swedish Film Institute, and the dissolution of its American distributor has left no viable path to a US university-based screening. That a film of this significance remains functionally inaccessible beyond to a select-few is itself part of the story this festival seeks to tell.