About WOCNI
Through the Women of Color Narrative Initiative (WOCNI), VJS aims to achieve narrative justice through new modes of liberatory storytelling and community engagement that center women of color in film and media. WOCNI will invest $5000 dollars in three filmmakers each year towards their creation of new films with themes relevant to advancing justice for women.
Women of color working in film need investment and opportunities to radically reimagine narratives that are impacting their lives, while asserting visionary justice through the lenses they bring to the creative process and to cultural problem solving. This is critical to evolving stories and representations for film and TV that are multiplicitous. In generating these stories, we are investing in women economically, while supporting them to innovate from a position of power and leadership. We aim to be both wide in representation of those affected by oppression and specific in conveying the nuance of identity and circumstance.
We believe nothing shapes and shifts culture like its stories. At this critical moment when radical efforts towards racial justice are taking root across the nation, our goal is to center those directly impacted while applying the lenses of gender and sexuality in the storytelling. WOCNI will increase the number of BIPOC women content creators, generate more intersectional stories in the realm of narrative filmmaking, and support community driven exhibition and distribution models.
