Wanda's Picks Maafa Commemorations Special

Robert Henry Johnson is a dancer and playwright who mixes movement style and literary influences with equal fluidity. The son of jazz singer Lady Mem'fis and guitarist Robert Gonzales, he was one of the first students to graduate from San Francisco's School of the Performing Arts. He attended the San Francisco Ballet School on full scholarship. His performances are an arresting mix of muscular virtuosity, manic energy and naked emotion. The founder of the Self Care Reform movement, Marcus Lorenzo Penn, M.D. is a native of San Francisco, CA and currently lives in Oakland, CA.  Harnessing his many talents as a yoga teacher, photographic artist, public and community health physician, author, and speaker, Dr. Penn is passionate about living, seeing and moving through life fully.  He focuses much of his attention on providing health education and promoting good health and wellness through yoga and other preventive health practices. Juanita Capri Brown is a societal equity consultant specializing in racial equity and healing, strategic community engagement and organizational development.  Brown served as co-producer and lead facilitator for the 2009 Emmy-nominated documentary Traces of the Trade:  A Story from the Deep North. Fay Dearborn is a programmer at the San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, one of 3 film festivals produced by the non-profit SF IndieFest (as Assistant Director). Joshua Atesh Litle was raised in San Francisco, the son of a Turkish novelist and American cinema professor.  A longtime Hip-Hop fan, his first passion was music, and he worked as a bassist, composer, and DJ before picking up the camera. Always interested in social causes, he began directing projects for Amnesty International in 2009.  "The Furious Force of Rhymes" represents a culmination of his three passions:  cinema, music, and social justice.