With the NYC Premiere of MAMA BEARS, a documentary by Daresha Kyi this October 21st at NewFest, we are lucky to have the filmmaker join us to talk about the making of this film.

Join us at this in-person event as Daresha Kyi shows some clips and talks about the journey to make this film, and her own journey to directing and producing. The event will be in Room 291, Shepard Hall, City College of New York.

This event is sponsored by the Documentary Forum at CCNY and Third World Newsreel and cosponsored by the LGBTQ+ Student Center at City College.

RSVP to: https://bit.ly/3fLjZmF

About Mama Bears:

Spread across the country but connected through private Facebook groups, over 30,000 mothers in America—many from conservative, Christian backgrounds—fully accept their LGBTQ+ children. And they call themselves "mama bears" because while their love is warm and fuzzy, they fight ferociously to make the world kinder and safer for all LGBTQ+ people. MAMA BEARS explores the journeys of two mama bears and a young lesbian whose struggle for self-acceptance exemplifies why the mama bears movement is vitally important.

MAMA BEARS is an intimate, thought-provoking exploration of the journeys taken by Sara Cunningham and Kimberly Shappley, two “mama bears” —whose profound love for their LGBTQ children has turned them into fierce advocates for the entire queer community — and Tammi Terrell Morris, a young African American lesbian whose struggle for self-acceptance perfectly exemplifies why the mama bears are so vitally important.

About Daresha Kyi

Daresha Kyi is an Emmy Award–winning director who also writes and produces film and television in Spanish and English. She most recently directed a short documentary for Time Studios and the SpringHill Company called GEORGIA GOING BLUE about the Georgia-based grassroots organizations working to fight voter suppression in Georgia and throughout the country. She is currently in post-production on BLACK VOTERS MATTER, a feature documentary which chronicles Cliff and April Albright’s and LaTosha Brown’s rise from aspiring acolytes to game changing civil rights leaders and the critical role they played in helping Georgia flip from red to blue in 2020 and 2021. In 2018 Daresha was commissioned by the ACLU to direct TRANS IN AMERICA: TEXAS STRONG which garnered over 3.5 million views online, premiered at SXSW and went on to win the News & Documentary Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Documentary as well as two Webby Awards. In 2017 she co-directed and co-produced CHAVELA a multiple award-winning Spanish language documentary about iconic, lesbian ranchera singer Chavela Vargas ranked the “Number One Latin American Documentary of the Decade” by CineArte magazine and produced DISPATCHES FROM CLEVELAND.

RSVP to: https://bit.ly/3fLjZmF