QUEER WOMEN OF COLOR MEDIA ARTS PROJECT-QWOCMAP Film & Freedom Academy

QUEER WOMEN OF COLOR MEDIA ARTS PROJECT-QWOCMAP Film & Freedom Academy is sponsored by California Arts Council. Provides free, artistically rigorous, culturally responsive filmmaking workshops for LGBTQIA+ BIPOC youth aged 18–24.

About - QWOCMAP: Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project Filmmaker Development Program Our pathway from first film to professional career Free filmmaking intensives with stipends, equipment, and mentorship An 18-month fellowship for emerging LBTQIA+ filmmakers of color Apprenticeships in media arts and creative technologies Preserving the stories of our elder artists and activists Connecting filmmakers with social justice movements Visit the International Queer Women of Color Film Festival Protect and serve our community Archive of every festival since 2004 Free submissions through FilmFreeway Watch 9 screenings online.

Available worldwide!

The world's largest collection of films by queer and trans filmmakers of color Where you can watch QWOCMAP films near you Founding Executive/Artistic Director and filmmaker The life of Black Cape Verdean writer and activist Jewelle Gomez The Worlds of Bernice Bing The Abstract Expressionist painter, Buddhist, and Chinese American lesbian Sambal Belacan in San Francisco Cultural identity, lesbian sexuality, and immigration JEWELLE: A Just Vision (2022) by Madeleine Lim Custom screenings and presentations for your organization Consultations & Trainings Accessibility, disability justice, and inclusive media practice QWOCMAP Productions Studio Videography, editing, and production for mission-aligned clients Who will tell LBTQIA+ BIPOC stories if we don't?

A model developed over 25+ years of practice The latest from QWOCMAP and our community Madeleine Lim Receives Pride Commendation Support 25+ years of LBTQIA+ BIPOC storytelling Sustain QWOCMAP with a recurring gift Sponsor the festival or partner on programs Volunteer, intern, staff, Board & more Strategic and ongoing Movement partnerships See yourself at festivals, workshops, and community events Who will tell our stories if we don’t?

For over 25 years, QWOCMAP has transformed filmmaking — the world’s most expensive art form — into a practice of freedom. Founded in San Francisco in 2000, QWOCMAP creates pathways for LBTQIA+ people of color filmmakers to tell their own stories, on their own terms, and change the world in the process. Who we serve shapes how we serve them — from how we structure a workshop to how we run a film festival.

QWOCMAP envisions a world where LBTQIA+ BIPOC leadership transforms power through film. The Combahee River Collective taught us the liberation of Black lesbians necessitates dismantling all forms of oppression. Following this wisdom, we advance cultural resistance and renewal through filmmaker-activists who reshape how the world sees and treats our communities.

QWOCMAP builds narrative power by transforming the world's most expensive art form into a tool for liberation. We fund, create, exhibit, and distribute high-impact films that shatter stereotypes and reveal the lived truth of inequality. We actively invest in, develop, and nurture the brilliant creativity and incisive leadership of LBTQIA+ BIPOC communities.

By changing who is behind the lens, we fundamentally transform what appears onscreen. We move from stereotypical, limited depictions toward just, compelling narratives grounded in community truth. Our “Film AS Movement” framework builds narrative power: shifting who controls the stories that shape how the world sees and treats our communities.

Rooted in authorship, narrative sovereignty, community accountability, and ethical practice, this framework treats systemic bias as a craft issue. Every aspect of production, from cinematography to editing, is an opportunity to interrupt the cycle of oppression and build something new. Explore Our Theory of Change These principles ground everything we do.

They come from 25 years of practice, reflection, and community leadership. We honor Indigenous peoples’ inherent right to self-determination to steward their lands, resources, cultural heritage, language, and narrative. This commitment shapes how we create, where we go, and whose stories lead.

The liberation of Black lesbians — transgender Black people and queer Black people, and all Black people — necessitates dismantling all forms of oppression. Black liberation is our organizational foundation, not a program area. Native Sovereignty and Black Liberation are two parts of the same braid.

We are peoples who have had our lands stolen and we have been stolen from our lands. Our solidarity is crucial to dismantling the foundation and centuries-long legacy of oppression in the Americas. Drawn from the inclusive feminism of Black lesbians and Black trans women, we challenge, prevent, and heal violence and harm.

We understand that interpersonal violence and structural violence have to be addressed together. We both imagine and create a thriving future for us all. Disability justice is more than accessibility and accommodations.

It shapes our craft as filmmakers, it is a part of our creative process, and built into every film. It is the root of our programs and our operations. Film training and development are expensive.

The industry says that’s just the business. But in a media-saturated society, this economic injustice is a form of censorship. QWOCMAP was founded with a stubborn commitment to economic justice and anti-capitalist policies.

We remove financial barriers through free programs that also provide resources and support. Our community deserves the best. We’re grounded in continuous growth driven by community needs.

We take calculated risks, view challenges as opportunities for change, and support collective development through rigorous reflection. Safety, Welcoming, & Belonging We build pan-ethnic, multi-racial spaces that honor varied identities, histories, and traditions. Communities most affected by inequity are visibly leading, while creating spaces of genuine welcome for all.

We do what we say we are going to do. We communicate openly about needs and limitations and hold ourselves accountable to our community. As Ella Baker demonstrated, “strong people don’t need strong leaders.

” We cultivate leadership within our community, recognizing that systemic change requires transforming our own thoughts and behaviors. Rooted in disability justice and abolition feminism, care is how we change the world. We go beyond basic accessibility to transformative practices that honor all bodies, minds, and spirits.

We bring humor, pleasure, and love to our work. Play is active communication — it allows creative expression and breaks free from constraints. Joy is resistance and renewal.

Created with and for QWOCMAP volunteers and partners to guide how we collaborate. Art and social justice need love, joy, and compassion. Be Responsible & Accountable Show up on time, communicate proactively, support the team.

Follow through. Ask for support when needed, find solutions together. Use “I” statements, distinguish intent from impact, stay respectful.

Offer solutions with feedback. Trust the process, avoid gossip. Listen fully, be mindful of space, address power dynamics openly.

Our free programs create a thriving ecosystem where participants become mentors, instructors, and community leaders. The Film & Freedom Academy is a free, 4-day filmmaking intensive for LBTQIA+ BIPOC creatives. Cohorts rotate: past workshops have served youth, disabled filmmakers, LBTQIA+ Muslims of color, trans women of color, survivors of violence, and more.

Participants work with professional equipment, a dedicated Film Mentor, and close support to create a 5-minute short film, with a $500 stipend and a premiere (the following year) at our annual International Queer Women of Color Film Festival (QWOCFF). Critical Juncture is an 18-month fellowship for emerging and early-career LBTQIA+ BIPOC filmmakers at the career moment when many filmmakers of color are pushed out of the field.

Fellows receive film grants, 12 months of mentorship, professional development in budgeting and fundraising, peer learning sessions, and connection to funders and financiers. Completed films screen at our annual International Queer Women of Color Film Festival (QWOCFF). Level up your filmmaking journey QTWork is a pathway from first film to full-time filmmaking career.

Building on the Film & Freedom Academy, QTWork includes paid internships, production work through QWOCMAP Productions, and the first federally registered National Apprenticeship in Media Arts & Creative Technologies. Participation includes 2,000 hours of paid employment as Digital Editors, Multimedia Producers, and Digital Archivists, with full health, vision, and dental benefits.

years of filmmaking as movement continents reached through film distribution filmmakers trained through free workshops films in the world's largest collection by queer and trans people of color professional workshops tailored to specific communities QWOCMAP is led by queer women of color, nonbinary, and transgender people of color filmmakers committed to building power, creating beauty, and practicing joy. T.

Kebo Drew, CFRE directs capacity building, organizational development and strategic thinking, and is responsible for collaborations, engagement, and impact. She joined QWOCMAP as its second staff member in 2007 as a Horizons Foundation Rickey Williams Leader Fellow, when she developed and expanded the QWOCMAP Community Partner program.

She also conceived QWOCMAP’s signature presentation “Reels of Resistance: Film IS Social Justice Activism. ” She is responsible for building and expanding artistic collaborations and activist partnerships on local, national and international levels. She was a national 2012 Arts & Culture Fellow of the Rockwood Institute and a 2011 Next Generation Leaders of Color Fellow at CompassPoint.

Drew has professionally managed development, operations and events for corporations, community, arts and nonprofit organizations for over 20 years, and is a coach for the Fundraising Brights Spots program. She is a filmmaker, writer and dancer, she is the writer, producer and director of Ain’t I A Woman?

which has screened at the Langston Hughes African American Film Festival and Translations: the Seattle Transgender Film Festival, among many others around the world. She is a member of the QWOCMAP Productions Team responsible for story development.

She has also produced numerous films, which include Don’t Fence Me In: Major Mary and the Karen Refugees from Burma, which won the Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary from the 2006 Washington D. C. Independent Film Festival and the Director’s Citation Award from the 2006 Black Maria Film Festival.

She got her start in the 2001 QWOCMAP screenwriting workshop, where she wrote two feature-length screenplays. She has performed in the U.S., Latin America and Europe as a poet and dancer. She is a Cave Canem Poetry Fellow and won the Audre Lorde/Pat Parker Award and the Astraea Emerging Lesbian Writers Award.

She also won the Irene Weed Dance Award and Robert Kuykendall Dance Scholarship. You can contact Kebo at events@qwocmap. org Christina E.

Lang is a biracial Chinese-American filmmaker and artist committed to serving and empowering queer and transgender people of color communities. She first joined QWOCMAP as a communications intern in 2017, and worked at the 13th and 14th Queer Women of Color Film Festivals. Christina is a 2021 Film Festival Leadership Lab Fellow through Full Spectrum Features and Film Festival Alliance.

She holds a B. A. in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Bates College, with a minor in African American Studies and concentrations in Queer Studies and Race, Ethnicity, and Identity.

She completed an Honors Thesis about asexuality and aromanticism, and received the Twentieth-Anniversary Award in Gender and Sexuality Studies. You can contact Christina at programs@qwocmap. org Executive/Artistic Director Madeleine Lim is an award-winning filmmaker with over 30 years of experience as a producer, director, cinematographer and editor.

Her films have screened at sold-out theaters at international film festivals around the world, including the Vancouver International Film Festival, Mill Valley Film Festival, and Amsterdam Amnesty International Film Festival. Her work has been featured at universities and museums like the de Young, and Asian Art in San Francisco, and Crocker Art in Sacramento, and broadcast to millions on PBS.

Lim’s films have received awards from the prestigious and highly competitive Paul Robeson Independent Media Fund, as well as the Frameline Film Completion Fund. She received the 1997 Award of Excellence from the San Jose Film & Video Commission’s Joey Awards and won the 1998 National Educational Media Network Bronze Apple Award. From 2000 to 2003, she was a California Arts Council Artist-in-Residence.

The Featured Filmmaker at the 2006 APAture Asian American Arts Festival, Lim has four times been awarded the San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist Commission for her films. She received grants from the Community Story Fund from Cal Humanities and the San Francisco Foundation Bay Area Documentary Fund for her film, The Worlds of Bernice Bing (2013), which won the Audience Award at the 2013 Queer Women of Color Film Festival.

She holds a BA in Cinema from San Francisco State University, where she was awarded Outstanding Cinema Student of the Year. For 17 years, she was an Adjunct Professor in the Film/Media Studies Department at the University of San Francisco. At the age of 23, Lim escaped persecution by the Singaporean government for her organizing work as a young lesbian artist-activist.

Ten years later, she created the award-winning documentary Sambal Belacan in San Francisco (1997), a film that is still banned in Singapore for its exploration of race, sexuality and nationality. As one of a small number of queer women of color filmmakers on the international film festival circuit in the late 1990s, she saw that only queer women of color would tell their own authentic stories.

QWOCMAP is the result of her vision and she founded the organization in 2000 with the belief that a community of artist-activist filmmakers could change the face of filmmaking and the social justice movement. Under Lim’s leadership, QWOCMAP’s Filmmaker Training Program was awarded 2003 Best Video Program by San Francisco Community Media.

In 2005, Lim received the LGBT Local Hero Award from KQED-TV in recognition of her leadership of QWOCMAP and her dedicated service to the queer women of color community. She was awarded the 2007 DreamSpeaker Award from Purple Moon Dance Project and the 2010 Phoenix Award from APIQWTC for her outstanding, sustained and pioneering contributions to the Asian Pacific Islander Queer Women & Transgender Community.

She received the 2011 Bayard Rustin Civil Rights Award from the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club for her leadership in advancing justice and equality for the LGBT community. She was honored with the 2013 State Farm Good Neighbor Award presented by Equality California for her extraordinary commitment to her work and the LGBT community.

In 2015, she won the Queer LifeSpace Artist On The Ground award in recognition for her work contributing to positive mental health for LBTQ women of color. In 2021, Lim received the Lifetime Achievement in Community Building Award from the Chinese Culture Center in recognition of her deep impact and unwavering commitment to empowering future generations of storytellers and working toward a more just and equitable future for all.

Throughout the past 20 years, her leadership has been recognized by members of the U.S. House of Representatives, the California State Senate and California State Assembly, and the SF Board of Supervisors. Our Board of Directors provides strategic guidance, governance, and accountability, stewarding resources and QWOCMAP’s mission and values.

Associate Professor, Filmmaker-Director Local Grown Corn Queer Chinese American nonbinary trans person Mel Y. Chen is Associate Professor of Gender & Women's Studies and Director for the Center for the Study of Sexual Culture at UC Berkeley, where they get to work with so many fierce and engaged queer, trans, nonbinary, first-generation, immigrant and BIPOC students.

They write in academic and arts publications, and teach about intersections of race, gender, sexuality, disability, and humanness with praxis and spaciousness. They were deeply changed by a screenwriting workshop and the 2006 filmmaker cohort, and are part of a queer/trans of color arts collective that has held a sustaining space for more than ten years.

Nonprofit Manager and Coordinator, Filmmaker-Director <i>A Boy on the Side</i> Queer Multiracial Mexican and Chinese nonbinary person Nat Ruiz Tofano is a queer and multiracial documentary filmmaker based in Oakland, CA. They work as a documentary film Producer and a Coordinator/Programmer for the documentary field.

They are committed to decolonizing and reimagining documentary film and storytelling; and lifting up stories from BIPOC and Queer communities. Nat is a proud 2009 QWOCMAP alumni.

They are an active member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, A-Doc (Asian American Documentary Network), a member-owner of New Day Films, and has produced numerous documentary projects that have aired on PBS, WORLD Channel, Al Jazeera English, CCTV-9, and CuriosityStream.

Pilates & Fitness instructor/Restorative Movement Coach, Filmmaker-Director Ardent Dissonance Harmonic Discord (Super Emotional) Queerean mixed-race Asian American pansexual woman Emily Park is a multi-disciplinary creative with an extensive background in the performing arts and a parallel profession in the arts of embodied movement for wellness as a Pilates and restorative movement coach.

In QWOCMAP’s 2024 cohort of Film & Freedom Academy, Emily created her first short film that had its premiere at QWOCMAP’s 21st annual film festival in June 2025.

Filmmaker-Director Jasmine’s Jubilee California State Registered Dental Hygienist, Filmmaker-Director Jasmine’s Jubilee Queer Japanese/Chinese American woman With 37 years in the dental field, she is also a long-time community activist who has volunteered for APIQWTC, Asian Women’s Shelter, Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach. She is a 3rd generation Asian American, born in Berkeley, raised in Richmond.

═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ --> Hear how QWOCMAP's trainings and festivals transform LBTQIA BIPOC filmmakers, audiences, and communities. QWOCMAP gives communities of people that do not typically have a voice in mainstream media a chance to find their voice and be heard. QWOCMAP opens doors.

And those of us that have somehow managed to be so lucky to make it in are opening up more doors. I recently became a recipient of a Princess Grace Award in Film and I think that has so much to do with how QWOCMAP is able to shape artists and lmmakers to tell their own truth and to believe in their work. Those are very powerful lessons to learn.

Having had that community of queer women of color filmmakers has been the foundation of my resolve to face the sexist, racist, and homophobic perspectives of the larger filmmaking community. It is very easy to become lost within the confines of one’s present world, and I always think back to QWOCMAP to find my way back to me. Hear how QWOCMAP's trainings and festivals transform LBTQIA BIPOC filmmakers, audiences, and communities.

QWOCMAP gives communities of people that do not typically have a voice in mainstream media a chance to find their voice and be heard. QWOCMAP opens doors. And those of us that have somehow managed to be so lucky to make it in are opening up more doors.

I recently became a recipient of a Princess Grace Award in Film and I think that has so much to do with how QWOCMAP is able to shape artists and lmmakers to tell their own truth and to believe in their work. Those are very powerful lessons to learn. Having had that community of queer women of color filmmakers has been the foundation of my resolve to face the sexist, racist, and homophobic perspectives of the larger filmmaking community.

It is very easy to become lost within the confines of one’s present world, and I always think back to QWOCMAP to find my way back to me. QWOCMAP is powered by community. Whether you volunteer at our film festival, mentor an emerging filmmaker, or support our programs as a donor, there's a place for you here.

Where community, creativity, and change converge.

Keep updated on programs, events, festival news, filmmaker spotlights, etc. KPFA Women’s Magazine interview: 22nd annual International Queer Women of Color Film Festival Lisa Dettmer, Host and Co-Founder of KPFA Women’s Magazine interviewed QWOCMAP’s Executive Director Madeleine&hellip; Audre Lorde rises again at 22nd annual International Queer Women of Color Film Festival SF/Arts published a spotlight about our 22nd annual International Queer Women of Color Film&hellip; Get QWOCMAP news, film releases, and training opportunities in your inbox, and never miss a festival update.

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