PartnerUP: Meet Jana Smith & Renée Wilson
Jana Smith & Renée Wilson
Why hello BWB friends,
We are so excited to announce the winner of the first-ever partnerUP scholarship: Jana Smith & Renée Wilson.
Renée is the Executive Producer and Jana Smith is the Writer and Creator of Red for Revolution, a six-part narrative audio drama written and directed by Jana Smith centering intergenerational stories of Black women, queer love, and liberation set in both the present and during the 1970s Black Liberation Movement.
We look forward to sharing more about this amazing work over the coming months.
Read on to learn more!
Cheers,
C&C
When a Black female revolutionary is assassinated, the two women left in her stead, a famous apolitical jazz singer, Lorraine Giovanni, and a revolutionary intellectual, Ella Ali, happen upon an unlikely romance during one of the most tumultuous periods in American history. The nonlinear narrative is framed through the lens of 18-year-old Jazmine, who is exploring her queer identity, experiencing love & heartbreak, and repairing her relationship with her homophobic mother.
As Jazmine seeks community and advice from her grandmother, Ella, listeners are invited to travel back in time to 1971 to hear how two women from vastly different backgrounds, with strikingly contrasting politics, and living coasts apart found each other and commenced a romance like no other.
MEET JANA
Jana Smith (she/her) is a Gary, Indiana-bred, interdisciplinary writer, filmmaker, and cultural worker passionate about intergenerational stories about women and femmes. Her prose has been published in Essence magazine! She also participated in Ryan Murphy’s “Half Initiative” for rising writers, directors, and creatives. Jana wrote Built to Last a podcast by American Express hosted by Elaine Welteroth. She has worked for the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, Madam Secretary, Random Acts of Flyness, and POV. During the quarantine, Jana created Relax, Relate, Release, a meditation series of empowering messages from Dr. Angela Davis, Debbie Allen, Dr. Maya Angelou, and many others.
She studied filmmaking at Sarah Lawrence College. Her work examines the intersection of Black womanhood, erased historiographies, and intergenerational healing (basically, whatever she's having an existential crisis about). Through her work, she strives to reflect the truth of our time while encouraging audiences to re-imagine our collective power for radical love and compassion.
MEET RENÉE
Award -winning director, writer, performer, and producer Renée Wilson is a proud native of New Orleans. She made her film debut portraying Raelette Pat Lyle in the Academy Awarding-winning film Ray and her documentary, Crepe Covered Sidewalks, about her hometown after Hurricane Katrina, was the centerpiece film of the New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival.
Her film Ode To Joy, an intimate paean to lineage, women, and Mother Earth, won the 2022 Maui Film Festival Audience Award for Stunning Short Film. Renée is a 2023 Jewish Film Institute Filmmaker in Residence, her new documentary The 13th Percent chronicles her search to find her unknown
Ashkenazi Jewish family in the Deep South of Louisiana. She is also producing Red for Revolution a narrative audio drama centering intergenerational stories of Black women, liberation, and queer love. She splits time between Dallas, Mexico, and Kauai and loves traveling the world with her husband Aaron and son Adrian.
