Beti Ellerson: About me

I have a Ph.D. in African Studies (Howard University, USA) with interdisciplinary specialisations in Visual Culture, African Cinema Studies, and Women Studies; after which I carried out postdoctoral research on African Women in the Visual Media on a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship. As a feminist I have always been interested in critically engaging women's issues, and academically I wanted to make a critical inquiry into African women's experiences through the medium of the moving image. This inquiry led to my interest in forging an African Women Cinema Studies subdiscipline, which encompasses research in historiography and spectatorship as well as the hands-on work of advocacy and production.

 

My research on African women in cinema, includes the book Sisters of the Screen: Women of Africa on Film, Video and Television (Africa World Press, 2000), the film documentary, Sisters of the Screen: African Women in the Cinema (2002, Women Make Movies) and the Centre for the Study and Research of African Women in Cinema founded in 2008. The Centre encompasses the African Women in Cinema Blog, and a presence on social media.

 

Before producing the documentary, Sisters of the Screen, I was involved locally in community television and video production in Washington DC, and was executive producer and host of the 27-episode series, "Reels of Colour", which aired from 1997 to 2000 in the Washington DC area.

 

I am globally engaged on the topic of African women and the moving image, including: keynote speaker at the 2012 colloquy on Francophone African Women Filmmakers in Paris; moderator of the Afrika Film Festival Cologne 2016, Fokus: Sisters in African Cinema Roundtable in Cologne, Germany; filmmaker/scholar-in-residence at Texas Tech University in spring 2017; research presentation at the International Women’s Film Festival of Salé in Morocco in September 2017. I have had a visible presence on the jury at several prominent African film festivals: member of the Grand Jury at the International Images Film Festival for Women held in Harare (2011), FESPACO (2013) as president of the Diaspora Jury, member of the Grand Jury at the Carthage Film Festival (JCC) in 2018.  I lecture widely on Africana women in visual culture--beginning with my signature course Black Women in Visual Culture, created in 2000 at Howard University, African women in cinema studies and African women and screen culture. Since 2015 I have been contributor of the African Women in Cinema Dossier for Black Camera International Film Journal.