Aishah Shahidah Simmons and I met over ten years ago in Washington, DC when she was dating an old friend. We spent a Saturday night with friends dancing at the Hung Jury and talking about our future goals. I remember thinking that she was intensely passionate and I followed her career. I had not seen Aishah since that fun night until I ran into her this past fall when she attended the event to celebrate Katherine Acey's 20th Anniversary with the Astraea Foundation. I knew that I wanted to talk with Aishah about her work and journey to becoming an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker, television and radio producer, published writer, international lecturer, and activist living in Philadelphia.

In 1992, Aishah founded AfroLez® Productions, an AfroLez®femcentric multimedia arts company committed to using the moving image, the written and spoken word to address those issues which have a negative impact on marginalized and disenfranchised people.

Coined in 1990 by Aishah, AfroLez®femcentric defines the culturally conscious role of Black women who identify as Afrocentric, lesbian, and feminist. For three years, while working a full time “day” job as a media assistant at the American Friends Service Committee, she co-produced two monthly public television programs for a PBS affiliate in Philadelphia. Her internationally acclaimed short videos Silence…Broken and In My Father’s House, which were produced in 1993 and 1996, explore the issues of race, gender, homophobia, rape, and misogyny.

Aishah is incest and rape survivor, who spent eleven years, seven of which were full time, to produce, write, and direct NO! The Rape Documentary. This groundbreaking documentary explores the international reality of rape and other forms of sexual assault through the first person testimonies, scholarship, spirituality, activism and cultural work of African-Americans. Winner of an audience choice award and a juried award at the 2006 San Diego Women Film Festival, NO! also explores how rape is used as a weapon of homophobia. NO! is a Black feminist educational organizing tool, which is being used in the global movement to end violence against women and children. Since its official release in 2006, NO! has been screened and distributed to racially and ethnically diverse audiences at: film festivals, community centers, colleges/universities, high schools, correctional facilities, rape crisis centers, battered women’s shelters and various conferences throughout the United States, in Italy, Spain, Hungary, Croatia, Rwanda, Kenya, Nepal, South Africa, Jordan, Burkina Faso, Peru, Mexico, Brazil, and Turkey.

Through a major grant, received in 2006, from the Ford Foundation, Aishah, coordinated the French, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitling of NO!; produced and directed the two-hour Breaking Silences: A Supplemental Video to NO!

Her work and activism have been documented in local, national, and international publications including From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism; The Quotable Rebel: Political Quotations for Dangerous Times; Gender Talk: The Struggle for Women’s Equality in African-American Communities; No Secrets No Lies: How Black Families Can Heal from Sexual Abuse; Pimps Up, Ho’s Down: Hip Hop’s Hold On Young Black Women; Ms. Magazine, National Public Radio’s “Tell Me More” with Michel Martin, The Philadelphia City Paper, The Philadelphia Weekly, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Los Angeles Times, COLORLINES Magazine, The New York Daily News, The Black Scholar, The Philadelphia Tribune, Essence Magazine, Sojourner: The Women’s Forum, Women In The Life Magazine, LA Weekly, Filmmaker Magazine, Sable Magazine.com, AllHiphop.com, The Independent: Film & Video Monthly and many, many other publications and programs.

Aishah is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including the 2008 Legend Award from Philadelphia Black Gay Pride Association, the 2007 International Federation of Black Prides Award; the 2007 Media Award from the Institute on Domestic Violence in the African-American Community; the 2006 D.C. Rape Crisis Center’s Visionary Award; a 2006 grant from the Ford Foundation to support the international educational marketing and distribution of NO!; an Artist-in-Residency at Spelman College’s Digital and many others.

Please read the interview with the very passionate Aishah Shahidah Simmons whose film and activism is empowering women throughout the world.

What is your passion?

My passion is centralizing the margins of society. Making the invisible, visible. Documenting the lives of women of color globally. I am an activist. The camera lens is my medium to make social change irresistible.

Who (or what) has contributed to your inspiration? Do you have role models or people that inspire you in your work?

A huge person who is no longer here is Toni Cade Bambara. She was a major role model. She was an award winning writer and filmmaker. She was dear friends with Toni Morrison. And when she died in 95, Toni published two of her books.

My parents are huge role models. They met during the civil rights movement in the sixties. My father is an activist in Europe. He is in Budapest, Hungry. He does international human rights. My mother is feminist Islamic scholar, who is completing a book on Muslim feminism.

Michelle Parkinson tremendously influenced me.

Zeinabu Davis. Yvonne Welbon. Julie Dash. Tina Morton.

What motivates you to do your work? What do you hope to accomplish by doing this work?

Injustice in the world motivates me. Injustice fuels my passion to make change. Anytime when I feel that I can’t do it, there is an issue that I feel needs to be addressed. An issue very dear to my heart is violence against WOMEN.

I am survivor of violence. It is personal. I know more women here in the United States and abroad who have been impacted by violence than those who have not. Whether it was being the victim of violence or witnessing domestic violence and other forms of violence. It has impacted so many women.

When did you discover what you wanted to do? What was the next step?

When I was in high school my best friend wanted to be a filmmaker. I thought that was ridiculous because in the 80’s black women were not making films, but that got me to thinking about the possibilities of making films.

My sophomore year while attending Temple University I went to Mexico for a summer to study Spanish. I became a victim of a date rape. We were not allowed to go out and I the broke the rules that night. Looking back I was an adult and should have been able to do what I wanted to do. But I snuck out and ended up being raped. I never reported it because I was afraid of what Temple might do because I broke the rules. I got pregnant from the rape and had an abortion. I was very confused and tormented after the rape and I went to Spain after the rape and spent time backpacking. It was there that I started to connect with a global community. It really changed my life. And I decided to leave school. l realized that I didn’t want to get in debt over a degree, but in debt over a film. When I returned after the summer, I went with my mother to a party at Sonia Sanchez’s house to celebrate her birthday. It was there that I met Toni and I started telling her how I wanted to become a filmmaker. I told her that I didn’t know of any black women filmmakers. And in that moment she named at least 80 black women filmmakers. And she said, “we don’t know their names because they’re not Hollywood filmmakers.” She told me to come to her script writing class at Scribe Video Center. I told her that I didn’t have money and she said, “I didn’t ask you if you had money.”

Toni was my first teacher. And during that time, I came out. Everything literally fell in the place. I know that many people often say that when a woman has been raped that is the reason why she is gay. But what I realized is that I was trying to prove that I was straight by going out on that date. I wanted to be quote on quote normal. I was trying to make myself like him. I was trying to prove that I was straight. Anyway, after I came out. Everything literally fell "into" place. I think a lot of my torment and craziness was connected to not embracing the fact that I am a lesbian. My father actually knew that I was a lesbian when I was in high school. He even told me to talk to a black lesbian. Because he knew that if I spoke to a black straight woman, she might tell me that I was going through a phase. He actually found someone for me to talk to. She talked to me. But I was still in denial and trying to live this straight life. I still went through a lot of trauma before I came out. Anyway, my first project was "Silence Broken," which looking at a black lesbian looking at the refusal to be silent about racism, sexism and homophobia. And my second short was “In My Father’s House.” I also started doing therapy during this time…it was the beginning of dealing the rape. It was in the early nineties. And then my next project was the documentary, "NO," which took 11 years to make. "NO" was conceived in South Africa when I was there to observe the election for Nelson Mandela to become President.

How do you define success?

Success is something that I often think about. Because there is apart of me, the filmmaker, who wants to be known as a filmmaker and receive awards and accolades. I am realizing more and more that I want the affirmation of the community. Because as an activist, I want the community to support me. Some filmmakers want an Academy Award. Some filmmakers want a film at Sundance. I had to keep looking at that. Because the documentary, "NO" is not at Sundance. So success for me is beyond black women. It's about women saying thank you because you affirmed my reality. That is success.

What have been your greatest successes personally and professionally?

For me the greatest success was the completion of "NO." And that’s both personal and professional. The making of the documentary took me to hell and back.

Where do you see your life in the next 10 years?

Continuing to make films that centralize the margins. I think that I will always be a documentary filmmaker, but I hope to be involved with narrative films that do that as well. Presently, as I recuperate from my journey with NO!, I am in the very initial stages of thinking about a documentary that will explore the origins of and address the demonization of Black adolescent and teenage girls' sexuality. So right now my work still addresses universal realities through the perspectives of Black women and girls.

What do you fear? How do you overcome that?

That’s a hard question. I know when I was making NO, I was afraid that I would not be able to complete it. I don’t consider myself religious, but have incorporated Buddhist principles into my life and so it’s about learning how to confront my fears without attachment to the outcome. And it’s a work in progress. I am not some Zen master at all. That’s my ongoing journey.