In Loving Color is a documentary short that highlights & celebrates Black Queer Love through the lens of millennial couples in Atlanta, GA.

We first thought of the idea back in 2020 when we were thinking about ways to document the community and showcase the many iterations of Love that we saw within the Black Queer community. Due to the lack of resources and support at the time, we were unable to see the project through to completion. 

Two years later, we are back and stronger, with a team of 6 and more support than ever, to finally complete this short film for our beloved community. 

This film is a labor of love from us to our fellow Black & Queer community members, and is also an exploration of Love, in its many forms, in Black queer partnerships. We want to highlight the variety, the intimacy, and the beauty of the love that exists between partners.

We deserve to see ourselves love each other as loudly and proudly as we have had to learn to love ourselves individually.

Blackness and queerness exist on a gradient, much like colors do. As Black people, our skin is the first color palette we recognize, and as Black people who are queer, we are able to see ourselves as many different vibrant hues; some of us stick to one color most of our lives, and others transform into lilacs, periwinkles, magentas, mahoganies galore.

Love is a verb, and much like Black people, it is not monolithic. Canonically, when we think about Love and colors, we associate Love with the color red. I want people to know that Love has so many different colors - and I’d like to capture some of that on screen: for us, by us.

In Loving Color: Black Queer Love on Film is Love’s expression through art, seeing those colors in motion; it is an exploration of Love in Black queer partnerships. Black queer Love is special: it is resistant, it is pure, it is sacred, it is real, it is majestic, it is community. We deserve to see ourselves love each other as loudly and proudly as we have had to learn to love ourselves individually; I believe we’ve earned the God-given right to do so. In a short mini-documentary, we will sit down with five couples in Atlanta, GA, while they talk about their journey as individuals and as partners - and what it means to be Black, queer, and in love.

My hope is that this will not only bring joy to my beautiful, beloved community but also be a step forward for us in the diaspora; we’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go. Let’s start with Love.

- Afiya Jannah John, Creative Director

Afiya Jannah John (she/her) is a writer, photographer, and aspiring filmmaker from Brooklyn, New York. She majored in Journalism at SUNY Buffalo State and later transferred to the University at Albany, SUNY, where she earned her Bachelor’s degree.

Currently, Afiya is a graduate student at the University of Delaware. Her research focuses on applying Black feminist theory to visual media; examining how images and art can be a powerful tool for healing and liberation in the Black community.

Lizette London (she/her) is a proud New York native and Black feminist scholar, artivist, filmmaker, and community organizer. In 2017, she earned her BA in Comparative Women’s Studies from Spelman College, where she co-produced her first documentary short chronicling a community’s response to gentrification in the historic Westside district of Atlanta, Georgia. Her student film “Rooted” became an official student selection of the 2017 Bronze Lens Film Festival. Lizette continued her research in Black Feminist Visual Arts and Cultural Studies at New York University Gallatin School of Individualized Study, earning her MA in May of 2020. 

Aside from her studies, Lizette worked as a Graduate Film Teaching Assistant at NYU under the tutelage of Filmmaker Spike Lee and renowned Black Photography historian and scholar Deborah Willis. In 2020, she began her passion project, The Lavandula Project, an artist's resource garden and community collective that centers on the artistic and intellectual traditions of Black women feminist thinkers, filmmakers, photographers, and creative writers. 

Most recently, Lizette finished her first major production with Spike Lee as a researcher and Director's Assistant on the HBO Documentary Epicenters 9/11-2021 1/2. Lizette is located in Atlanta, GA, and works as a Producer and in Arts Programming. 

Jasper Brooks (he/him) is a California-born, Arizona-raised multimedia artist, healer, and educator. Jasper has a Bachelor of Science in Digital Cinema and Filmmaking with a concentration in Women’s and Gender Studies from Pace University in New York City, NY. He also has a Master's in Business Administration from the Illustrious Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, GA. 

Jasper is fascinated by how white supremacy uses the power of perception to uphold systems of oppression and strives to continuously fight against those systems by creating and showcasing images representing the love and humanity marginalized communities have to offer.

Le'ianna Nicole (she/her) is a southern black woman storyteller weaving stories through film, poetry, theatre, and photography. She seeks to intimately explore the lived experiences of Black women across the African Diaspora, creating havens of collective healing and empowerment.

Through her work, she hopes to explore black ancestral memory, contribute to liberation movements, uncover/dismantle systems of oppression, and live in the duality of black joy and rage, all while creating bastions of healing. Le'ianna received her BA (2020) from Winthrop University, majoring in Theatre Performance and minoring in Film/Content Production. 

Upon graduating, Le’ianna has worked professionally as a theatre director, stage manager, teaching artist, archival assistant, associate producer, and production assistant.

Beyond the art she creates, Le'ianna is a lover of nature, words, all things black culture, astrology, beaches, and chicken wings! She seeks to actualize all the things she's imagined and live her life as a love letter to all black women, including herself. You can find her laughing hysterically at her Twitter feed, mixing up herbs, or somewhere sunbathing when she isn't creating. 

This project intends to celebrate Blackness, queerness, and love - but also to highlight the variety, intimacy, and beauty of the love between REAL people. 

We don't have many spaces dedicated to the celebration of us in mainstream media, and we'd like to change that for our community. We deserve to see ourselves loudly and proudly, especially because LGBTQIA+ pride is Black pride!

While the main objective of this film is to highlight Black queer love, we also want this film to be a labor of love from us to our fellow community members. We don't get to see ourselves represented in stories about romance in the media very often, and we'd like to change that!

In addition, we believe that love is community and community is love; community is an integral part of our experience as Black people across the diaspora, and for Black LGBTQIA+ folks, the community is especially sacred. It's our space to be seen, heard, and validated, and we want our audience to feel those emotions while watching our short film.

Behind every great production is a great budget!

The proposed budget/stretch goal for the entire film is $15,000, but we need about $13,500 to get us through the production phase: compensating crew sufficiently, travel and lodging for our amazing DP and Gaffer, securing studio space, equipment rentals, honoriarium for our couples, food, and so on. 

So, we need your help!

Here’s our tentative timeline: 

July 2022 - Pre-Production - our planning phase!

August 2022 - Production - we've got our couples and we're ROLLING. Covid safety measures via Georgia Film will be observed*

September 2022 - Post-Production - time to put it together.  

October 2022 - Fin. We're planning to have our Community Screening for Atlanta Pride Month and possibly submit to a few festivals!

Thank you so much for supporting us! Every contribution, no matter the size, helps tremendously. 

We are so excited to create this film for everyone!

With Love, Afiya, Jasper, Liz, Le’ianna, and Cai

Please Follow & Share: 

Instagram: @inlovingcolorfilm 

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Have you heard of this new upcoming short film called "In Loving Color: Black Queer Love on Film"? It’s a short doc that highlights & celebrates Black Queer Love through the lens of millennial couples in Atlanta, GA. You can contribute to the project on @seedandspark: https://seedandspark.com/fund/inlovingcolorfilm