Jamilah's Fundraiser for QWOCMAP!

I’m part of a team raising $21,000 for QWOCMAP. For 20 years, their Filmmaker Training Program has provided free professional workshops, mentoring, and equipment and resources for filmmakers like me to create a new film. 

Back in 2008, I was a newly minted college graduate who was eager to merge my queer and hometown communities in San Francisco. QWOCMAP, the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project, gave me that opportunity. For the first time ever, I learned how to write a script, hold a camera and actually use it. More importantly, I connected with people like me -- young and older, queer and trans, working class and wealthy -- all people of color who were eager to share with the world how they'd come into and out of themselves. After the workshop ended, I volunteered for years afterward because the annual QWOCMAP Film Festival was one of the most fun, creative, and well-run spaces around.

Too often we don't think of our stories as worthy of being told, or we don't have access to the machinery to tell them ourselves. QWOCMAP has been working for more than two decades to do something different. 

Critical Juncture takes this work even further, providing production camera packages, post-production laptop packages, and small grants along with advanced training and industry mentorship. The Ford Foundation “Beyond Inclusion” report noted that the filmmakers that QWOCMAP serves are forced out of filmmaking because of a lack of additional resources and support. This is important because our films play a big role in shifting culture over the long term toward justice.

QWOCMAP wants to change all that for emerging filmmakers like me who have created 1-2 films through the Filmmaker Training Program, and for filmmakers who’ve continued to create beyond the program. We want to make sure that our community creates the films that create change.

Right now, we need 2,100 individual donors each make contributions of $10 or more in order to meet our goal of $21,000. If we meet that goal, QWOCMAP will be eligible for additional cash prizes!

It would mean a lot to me if you made a donation. QWOCMAP gave me the support I needed to make a film about bisexual, transgender Chinese elder Jasmine Jubilee Gee. With their help, I shouted the value of her life in ways that counter anti-Asian hate.

If you donate to QWOCMAP during Pride month from June 1 to June 30, that will count towards my goal for Give OUT Day, the only national day of giving for the LBTQ community. Your gift of $10 or more will help to lay a cornerstone as a foundation for change! 

Thank you!