Film Forum

The New York Women’s Foundation supports bold, community-driven solutions that advance gender, racial, and economic equality to build a better future for women, girls, gender-expansive individuals, and their families. Since 1987, The Foundation has invested $133 million in over 500 organizations, fostering a vibrant community of grantees, philanthropists, advocates, innovators, and changemakers. Learn more at nywf.org.

Since 1977, the Center for the Study of Women and Society has promoted interdisciplinary feminist scholarship. The center’s research agenda focuses on the intersectional study of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, and nation in societies around the world.

Founder and Director of Aubin Pictures, Catherine Gund is an Emmy-nominated and Academy-shortlisted producer, director, writer and activist. Her media work focuses on strategic and sustainable social transformation, arts and culture, HIV/AIDS and racial, reproductive and environmental justice. Her films have screened around the world in festivals, theaters, museums and schools; on PBS, HBO, Paramount+, the Discovery Channel, Sundance Channel, Free Speech TV, Netflix, and Amazon Prime. In 2023, Gund won the Gracie Award for Documentary Producer. Her films include MEANWHILE, ANGOLA DO YOU HEAR US? VOICES FROM A PLANTATION PRISON (Academy shortlist), PRIMERA (HBO), AGGIE (Strand Releasing) and BORN TO FLY (Emmy nominated). She has served on several arts, media and justice nonprofit boards and has been a creative advisor on numerous documentary films. Gund is an alumnus of Brown University and the Whitney Independent Study Program. She has four children and lives in New York City.

Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist, writer, pedagogue, and cultural worker based in Philadelphia, PA. As a visionary thought leader creating socially conscious music, film, performance, and visual art, her practice embodies resilience, care, and community-centeredness while working at the intersections of reproductive justice, black feminist thought, and transformative change. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally at venues including MoMA PS1, the African American Museum of Philadelphia, Frieze LA, Eastern State Penitentiary, and the Brooklyn Museum, among many others. Baxter has received numerous prestigious awards, including being an inaugural Right of Return fellow, Mural Arts Philadelphia Reimagining Reentry fellow, Leeway Foundation Transformation awardee, and a Soros Justice fellow. On February 2, 2024, Baxter received a Governors' Pardon from Josh Shapiro and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, honoring her transformative work in the arts and culture sector and her 17-year commitment to communal healing, advocacy, and repair.

Jumaane D. Williams is the Public Advocate of the City of New York. Previously, he served on the NYC Council representing the 45th District. Jumaane is a first-generation Brooklynite of Grenadian heritage. He graduated from the public school system, overcoming the difficulties of Tourette's and ADHD to earn a Master's Degree from Brooklyn College. He began his career as a community organizer at the Greater Flatbush Beacon School and later served as the Executive Director of NYS Tenants & Neighbors. There, he fought for truly affordable, income-targeted housing across New York City and State. In the NYC Council, Jumaane championed landmark legislation that fundamentally transformed policing in NYC. Jumaane sponsored the Community Safety Act, reforming the City's Police Department by ending the abuse of Stop, Question & Frisk in communities of color and creating the NYPD's Office of Inspector General to investigate unlawful & unethical behavior. As former Co-Chair of the Council’s Task Force to Combat Gun Violence, he helped create New York’s Crisis Management System, which funds Cure Violence Groups that work to reduce shootings through a multi-pronged approach. The program fundamentally transformed the city’s approach to gun violence prevention, and as Public Advocate he continues to work for its expansion and improvement today. Jumaane has led the fight for better policing and safer streets, affordable housing, and transparency and accountability in City government. As Public Advocate, Jumaane will continue to be an activist-elected official who brings the voices of everyday New Yorkers to City government and makes New York a truly progressive beacon for all.

Catherine Morris is Senior Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum. She has has curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions including Elizabeth Catlett: A Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies (2024–25); Nona Faustine: White Shoes (2024); Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And (2021); We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 (2017); Judith Scott—Bound and Unbound (2014–15); and Materializing Six Years: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art (2012–13). She has worked on projects examining contemporary practices through historical precedents, including, most recently, It’s Pablomatic: Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby (2023). Morris has worked on exhibitions and curatorial projects on artists including Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, Eva Hesse, Frida Kahlo, Marilyn Minter, Zanele Muholi, Nellie Mae Rowe, Lorna Simpson, Kiki Smith, and Cecilia Vicuña. She has produced historical exhibitions such as Twice Militant: Lorraine Hansberry’s Letters to “The Ladder” (2013–14) and Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanitary Fair of 1864 (2010).

Dána-Ain Davis is Professor of Urban Studies at Queens College and on the faculty of the PhD Programs in Anthropology and Critical Psychology. She is the director of the Center for the Study of Women and Society at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research focuses on reproduction, race, and racism. Davis is the author, co-author, or co-editor of five books, most recently Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth (NYU Press 2019). The book received the Eileen Basker Memorial Prize from the Society for Medical Anthropology; The Senior Book Prize from the Association of Feminist Anthropology; was named a Finalist for the 2020 PROSE Award in the Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology category, given by the Association of American Publishers. The Victor Turner Ethnographic Writing Award Committee of the Society for Humanistic Anthropology awarded the book an Honorable Mention. The book was also listed in New York Magazine's Strategist column in an article, “Anti-Racist Reading List.” Davis is President of Aubin Pictures. She was recently awarded a three-year visiting professorship at University of Oxford Faculty of Law as of 2025. Among her other awards she is the recipient of: the 2023 American Anthropological Association’s Gender Equity Award; a Brocher Foundation Residency Fellowship in Switzerland; and was named the Association of Marquette University Women Chair in Humanistic Studies at Marquette University. Davis is also a doula and co-founded the Art of Childbirth that offers free birth education workshops incorporating artistic expression. Headhost photo credit: Alex Irklievski

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