Screenwriting Rooted in Decolonization and Abstract Thinking

A FREE 10-week, graduate-level course on storytelling, character, and writing rooted in decolonization frameworks. Writing stories for screens that develop a new/authentic film grammar based in radical storytelling, avant-garde movements in film, experimental works, ancestral mythologies, languages, and understandings of struggles of freedom and liberation. We will explore non-linear storytelling, the simplest and complex forms of radical storytelling, abstract thinking techniques, oral traditions, complex organism development, radical writers, diasporic writers, decolonization frameworks in relation to media, still mind practices, and disciplined writing practices. Hosted by Indigo Impact - Celestial People

Location: Adobe Books 3130 24th Street, SF CA 94110

Request invitation: https://goo.gl/forms/JOYdKQkgzQSV7a1H3

OVERVIEW We are concerned with words on the page. We will speak of writers, not directors. We will read and reference scripts referring to finished films rarely. We will study words, screenplays, plays, short stories, poetry, works on decolonization and revolutionary ideas. We will focus on writing for the moving image. This workshop/class is for anyone who wants to insert revolutionary ideas into writing for the screen or stage.

In class, we’ll study scripts, listen to others work, discuss struggles of resistance, watch and discuss films excerpts. Most importantly we will rip apart the rules of the masters and develop our own grammar for storytelling rooted in decolonization and liberation.

Your goal for this class should be to fail. This is a class rooted in deconstruction techniques. We will rip apart the masters and the traditional Western/Hollywood practices of storytelling and cinema. We will belabor the placement of the character, the point of view, time, space, place, and temporal. We have no blueprint. We will be working in a tight circle to develop our own language grammar, image and curriculum together. The hope is that this class can be adopted, customized, unpackaged, and recreated by the people to have a grounded and rooted understanding of the power of storytelling for the moving image.

Full Class Description and Curriculum

References (Work in Progress)

Instructor Maria Judice Writer | Director | Producer​

M writes films about little girls trying to realize themselves into the future. As a storyteller working in cinema, photography, and public art. She received her M.F.A. from CalArts in Film/Video. WIRED magazine called her a “filmmaker provocateur” bridging technology thinking with art making.

As an award-winning writer/director, her work ranges across new media platforms aligning left of center subject matters. With a practice of “autonomy first” her artwork is about community, space, and place. PALM TREES won the Adrienne Shelly Award for excellence in directing and aired on BET's “Lens on Talent”. Awards for the best narrative sci-fi film MOONLESS and screenplays EVENTUALLY EVERYTHING IS FINE and ORBITERS were also garnered. Represented by Flourishing Films her films have screened around the world.

INDIGO IMPACT was founded in 2016 with a mission to bring left of center stories and creators to global audiences as an Impact Producer. She’s produced titles like DREAMSTATES starring Saul Williams, Haiti’s first Oscar selection AYITI MON AMOUR, and JINN by Oakland native Nijla Mumin. She brings affordable music, literature, art, and performance to the Bay Area as a Co-Curator of the MATATU FESTIVAL. Sitting on the board of WFilm and Code Tenderloin she continually advocates for equality and equity.

Futurism and technology feed her love for science fiction, surrealism and fantasy. Her current work KILL, TIME views sci-fi through a lo-fi lens. ELEPHANT deconstructs pain and trauma in times of violence. A CERTAIN GRACE continues her conversation with San Francisco in making the invisible -- seen. There is a concentrated effort to decolonize of cinema of her instruction and create a grammar of her own rooted in the freedom and liberation of all people. Currently, She can be found in San Francisco kicking around the fog.

m@mariaaj.com

Mariaaj.com

@mariaajudice - IG/Twitter/Vimeo

Indigoimpact.co

@indigoimpactco