Ayoka Chenzira

Her work, as well as her efforts as one of the first African American woman film educators, have led some in the press to describe her as a media activist for social justice and challenging stereotype representations of African Americans in the mainstream media. Chenzira is most well known for her 35mm feature film Alma’s Rainbow (1993), the drama MOTV, animated films Hair Piece: A Film for Nappyheaded People (1984) and Zajota & the Boogie Spirit (1989). Many of her recent works as a transmedia storyteller play with the increasingly digital media world through art that combines material objects with digital environments, and interactive films including Chenzira and her daughter HaJ's collaboration on HERadventure (2013).

• Name — Ayoka "Ayo" Chenzira • Born — 1953 Nov 08 • Birthplace — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Occupation — Filmmaker and Television Director • Years Active — 1979-present • Known for — One of a handful of Black experimental filmmakers working in the late 1970s, One of the first African American women filmmakers to write, produce, and direct a feature film • Notable Works — "Hairpiece: A Film for Nappyheaded People", "Zajota & the Boogie Spirit", "Alma's Rainbow", "MOTV", "HERadventure"

Born in Philadelphia, Ayoka Chenzira was raised by her mother in North Philadelphia, living in the same building where her mother owned a beauty salon. She grew up playing the piano, cello, field hockey and studying ballet. Chenzira was exposed to art from a young age, including dance lessons, opera and theatre visits as a child. Her mother made reimagined designer clothing for Ayoka, and strongly encouraged her to pursue her artistic ambitions. She has been working with moving images since she was 17.

After graduating from high school, Chenzira studied film and photography at The College of New Rochelle in Westchester, New York. She accomplished her M.A. degree in education at Columbia University. She received her B.F.A. degree in film production from New York University, where her thesis film was Syvilla: They Dance To Her Drum (1979), "a short film that documented the African American concert dancer, Syvilla Fort, who was the vital link between the Katherine Dunham and Alvin Ailey periods of modern dance and who was Chenzira's dance teacher". She is the first African American to have earned her PhD in Digital Media Arts at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Chenzira is the Division Chair of the Arts at Spelman College and one of the first African Americans to teach film production in higher education.

Chenzira was one of a group of young Black filmmakers who worked outside of mainstream financing and production systems for films. From 1981 to 1984, Chenzira was the programs director of the Black Filmmakers Foundation, where she helped promote and distribute black films. She was one of the first African-American women to produce a feature-length film, Alma's Rainbow (1993). In 1984, she was one of seven writer/directors selected for the Sundance Institute. In the mid-1980s, Chenzira formed Red Carnelian, a New-York based production and distribution company focusing on media productions depicting life and culture of African Americans. The company has a successful production division as well as a distribution division, Black Indie Classics. Chenzira was the Chair of the Department of Media and Communication Arts at the City College of New York, where she managed programs in advertising, public relations, journalism, film and video; she also co-created their first M.F.A in media arts production graduate program. Chenzira was an arts administrator and lobbyist for independent cinema. She was a founding board member of Production Partners in New York, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the visibility of African-American as well as Hispanic and Latino American films. She was key in providing support for Charles Lane’s award-winning feature Sidewalk Stories (1989). She has also served as a media panelist for the Jerome Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts. Her contributions along with 14 other panelists for the Minority Task Force on Public Television resulted in the first Multicultural Public Television Fund. In the mid nineties, Chenzira was consultant to the M-Net Television of South Africa. She taught screenwriting and directing in Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, and South Africa. In 2001, Chenzira was invited to serve as the first William and Camille Cosby Endowed Professor in the Arts at Spelman College in Atlanta. There, she created and directed the award-winning Digital Moving Image Salon (DMIS), a year-long research and documentary production course. She also created and served as director of Oral Narratives and Digital Technology, a joint venture between Spelman College and the Durham Institute of Technology (DIT) where she designed and taught documentary filmmaking primarily for Zulu students at DIT. in 2015, Chenzira's films are in several notable permanent collections including those at Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She was also invited to show her early films at Lincoln Center as part of a celebration of Black filmmakers titled " Tell it like it is: Black independents in New York, 1968–1986. and the touring exhibition, We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965–1985.

• Syvilla: They Dance to Her Drum (Short) (1979) • Hair Piece: A Film for Nappy Headed People (Short) (1984) • Secret Sounds Screaming (Short) (1985) • Five Out of Five (Music Video) (1986) • On Becoming a Woman (Animation) (1986) • The Lure and the Lore (short) (1989) • Zajota and the Boogie Spirit (Short) (1990) • Pull Your Head to the Moon (TV Short) (1992) • Alma's Rainbow (1993) • Snowfire (Short) (1994) • Sentry at the Gate: The Comedy of Jane Galvin-Lewis (1995) • In the Rivers of Mercy Angst (Short) (1997) • HERadventure (2014) • MOTV (My Own TV)

In 2018, Chenzira received a call from Ava DuVernay inviting her to direct an episode in season 3 of Queen Sugar (Here Beside the River). For this episode Chenzira was nominated for an NAACP Award for Best Director. Since then, she has directed the season 4 finale of Queen Sugar, and episodes of Greenleaf, Trinkets, Delilah, Dynasty, A League of Their Own, Octavia Butler's Kindred, and Beacon 23.

Black Women Animate and the Cartoon Network honored Ayoka Chenzira in 2020 with the Cultural Innovator Award. In 2019, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences began to restore and preserve the films of Ayoka Chenzira. Many of Chenzira's films today are in permanent collections including MOMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art and some have been translated into French and Japanese. Her 1984 film short Hair Piece was chosen for preservation in the 2018 class of the National Film Registry. In 2018, Chenzira was nominated for an NAACP Award for her directing work on the television series, Queen Sugar. Chenzira won the 1991 Sony Innovator Award, and has been honored for her contributions to Black cinema by the mayors of New York City and Detroit.