Christian Cooper Walks and Talks

Christian Cooper is the NY Times-bestselling author of Better Living Through Birding and an Emmy winner for his work on National Geographic's Extraordinary Birder with Christian Cooper. Cooper serves as a vice president of NYC Bird Alliance, where he advocates for greater, safer access to green spaces for all, with a focus on outreach to youth in underserved communities. A longtime activist on issues of racial justice and LGBTQ equality, Cooper combined his passions in the BLM short story "It's a Bird" from DC Comics. He continues to seek synergy at the intersections of storytelling, progressivism, and environmentalism. 

A special community screening of the new documentary TCB - The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing

Followed by a conversation between filmmaker Louis Massiah and documentary participant Conor “Coco” Tomás Reed, moderated by Nina Johnson (Chair of Sociology and Anthropology) and introduced by Jamal Batts (Assistant Professor of Black Studies)

Author, educator, activist, and documentary filmmaker Toni Cade Bambara, with humor and deep insight, inspired a generation of artists to dedicate themselves to community empowerment. Editor of the breakthrough anthology The Black Woman (1970) and author of The Salt Eaters (1980) among other acclaimed works, Bambara came to Philadelphia and worked with Louis Massiah on the truth-telling documentary The Bombing of Osage Avenue (1986) and remained an activist and cultural worker in film and literature until her untimely death in 1995. TCB - The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing (2025, 105 min.) is a testament to their long and generative collaboration.

Massiah’s film, co-directed with and edited by Monica Henriquez, is structured as a series of lessons on cultural organizing, gleaned from Bambara's life and shared by her friends, colleagues and students. Not yet widely released, the film received its world premiere opening night at Philadelphia’s BlackStar Film Festival in August, where it was awarded Best Feature Documentary by the jury, voted Favorite Feature Documentary by the audience, and called “riveting” by Variety.  Featuring: Toni Morrison, Nikky Finney, Haile Gerima, Shirikiana Aina, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Manthia Diawara, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Malaika Adero, Linda Holmes, Conor Tomás Reed, Makeba Lavan and Clyde Taylor.

Credits:
Producer/Director – Louis Massiah
Editor/Director – Monica Henriquez 
Director of Photography – Michael Chin, Henry Adebonjo 
Sound – J.T. Takagi 
Music – Jerome Jennings
Animation/Motion Graphics Design – Gabriel Coffey

Aydelotte’s ongoing series, Race, Racism and the Liberal Arts, explores histories of how Black people, organizations, and ideas have existed outside of, pushed against, or reshaped from within the legacies and institutions of the  liberal arts. Bambara’s legacy and Scribe Video Center are vivid examples of this cultural work.

Louis Massiah’s award-winning documentaries include The Bombing of Osage Avenue (1986); W.E.B. Du Bois – A Biography in Four Voices (1996), two episodes of the PBS series Eyes on the Prize II (1987), and A is for Anarchist, B is for Brown (2002). Recipient of many accolades, including a duPont-Columbia Award, a Peabody, a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, and a local Emmy for his coverage of the MOVE Commission Hearings, Massiah is founder and director of Scribe Video Center, a leading Philadelphia-based nonprofit media arts center that seeks to explore, develop, and advance media as art and tool for progressive social change. From 2010-2012, Massiah served as the Lang Visiting Professor for Issues of Social Change at Swarthmore College, and he received an honorary doctorate in 2024.

Conor 'Coco' Tomás Reed is a Puerto Rican~Irish, gender-fluid street scholar of social movements in the Americas and the Caribbean, and the author of New York Liberation School: Study and Movement for the People’s University (2023). Coco is developing a new book project Hemisphere in Bloom, as well as a co-edited multilingual anthology Black Feminist Studies in the Americas and the Caribbean (Malpaís Ediciones). They have been immersed in two decades of struggles at the City University of New York and in New York City around transforming education and public space, anti-imperialism, police and prison abolition, solidarity with Palestine and Puerto Rico, reproductive rights, housing justice, and beyond, and they recently relocated to Philadelphia.

This event is free, accessible, and open to the public. Swarthmore can be reached by SEPTA Regional Rail on the Media/Wawa line. Driving directions can be found here.

The conversation will be livestreamed HERE.

Co-sponsored by the Black Cultural Center, Black Studies, Film and Media Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility. 

Filmmaker Osadolor Osawemwenze Screening & Performance

Filmmaker Osadolor Osawenwenze will present a screening of their film a_blurred_fluxx_00.avi and a live art performance on the theory and sound behind their art practice. Osadolor is a New York-based art director, visual maker, creative researcher, and sound designer. Their film a_blurred_fluxx_00.avi is an experimental documentary that delves deep into the complex interiority and fluid conversations among today's Blackqueer youth. This dynamic and non-linear supercut provides a carefully crafted audiovisual space for the multiplicity of Blackqueer self-expression to traverse candid everyday moments of joy, melancholy, introspection, euphoria, loneliness, and community-in-active-formation. The film was a finalist for Best Documentary (International Short Film) at the London Breeze Film Festival and has screened at the Black Harvest, Ann Arbor, and Lagos Queer Film Festivals. Osadolor is a recent graduate of Stanford University's Department of African and African American Studies with Honors and Distinction and a minor in Art. This event is co-sponsored by Swarthmore College's Department of Black Studies, Department of Film and Media Studies, Office of Inclusive Excellence, and Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility. Open to Swarthmore campus community.