Malkia K. Lydia

I have proud announcements to share in a few weeks when the embargoes are lifted, but for now I'm celebrating my first Sundance credit! Co-Producer on WHO KILLED ALEX ODEH? Back in 2019 through mere days before the pandemic in 2020, I worked for a bit with Will Youmans and Jason Osder on their labor of love and courage. I am so happy that their (and producer-extraordinaire Dawne Langford's) work premieres Jan 26 in Park City! Online viewing available Jan 29 - Feb 2. Best wishes to the team, the Odeh family, and all who are bringing truth to light. #lookupthecase #interdependent #filmmaker #stillonthejob

Joyce Garrett, a retired Washington DC high school choir teacher celebrated for changing her students’ lives, tracks down hundreds of former protégés to sing together once more. Powerhouse septuagenarian Joyce Garrett is a luminary in the choral world now, having produced choirs for Super Bowls, superstars, and presidents. Yet her toughest task came back in 1988 when her public-school ensemble was invited to an elite, destiny-altering competition in Vienna, Austria. Decades later, Garrett tracks down hundreds of her former singers. Along the road to a massive alumni concert, REUNION CHOIR revisits the heyday of DC’s famed Eastern High School Choir, an era when educators, Black communities, and cultural traditions withstood the fallout from urban disinvestment. Yes, we accept QCDs and other tax-deductible donations through Women in Film & Video! Click below to contribute. Contact malkia [at] kuyamba.com about major underwriting.

On and offstage, Gen Y performance artist Khalil Abdul Malik Raheem Munir examines his bittersweet upbringing, and grapples with the names and varied legacies he’s inherited from previous generations of Black men. Documentation of Khalil’s creative process evolves into a longitudinal portrait of healing among fathers and sons. Khalil’s South Philadelphia has a tradition of Black self-reliance dating back to the 1920s. Yet by the early 1980s when he was born—weighing one-pound-four-ounces, exposed to drugs in utero—the village surrounding 16th & Federal was unraveling. Khalil’s childhood was marked with trauma exacerbated by his father’s imprisonment, but also fortified by heritage and kinship, and a lifesaving arts program. We follow from ages 27 to 44 as Khalil builds and revises a signature one-man show and his relationship with Khalil Sr., his father. Together and separately, the two Khalils confront death, relapse, and regret; they reclaim salvation, fatherhood, and legacy.