Invisible Universe trailer

Invisible Universe trailer by M. Asli Dukan (4:59 min)

Invisible Universe Fundraiser information

Please join M. Asli Dukan/The Invisible Universe Foundation and POC Doc Film Development, Inc. to support the completion of the new documentary film

Invisible Universe: a history of blackness in speculative fiction

Friday, September 14, 2007
6:30 to 8:30pm
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
515 Malcolm X Boulevard (Lenox Avenue @ 135th Street)
New York, New York 10037

Cocktails ● Hors d’oeuvres ● Sneak preview of the film with director M. Asli Dukan and special guests.

Please print and return this form with your check or go to Purchase Invisible Universe Fundraiser Tickets here! for ticket purchase.
Advance reservations only. No ticket sales at door. No tickets will be mailed.

 Executive Producer ● $5,000 ● 8 tickets, program listing, screen credit
 Hyper Giant Star ● $2,000 ● 4 tickets, program listing, screen credit
 Super Giant Star ● $1,000 ● 2 tickets, program listing, screen credit
 Bright Giant Star ● $500 ● 1 ticket, program listing, screen credit
 Giant Star ● $250 ● 1 ticket + program listing
 Star ● $100 ● general admissions
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IMPORTANT! Please make check payable to our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas with “IU” written in the “in behalf of” memo field, and return by mail to: M. Asli Dukan/The Invisible Universe Foundation, (contact for address) Contact for IU address

For more information, contact Shay Sellars at Poc Doc Film Development, Inc. at (917) 776-5022 or by e-mail at For more Invisible Universe info Check out our website at Invisible Universe website

If you can not attend the fundraiser and would still like to donate via credit card, please visit the Invisible Universe Foundation webpage at our fiscal sponsor’s website at Invisible Universe donation page

Invisible Universe is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions in behalf of Invisible Universe may be made payable to Fractured Atlas. The value of admittance is $50.00. Any contribution above that amount is tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

Universe: a history of blackness in speculative fiction explores the relationship between the Black body and popular fantasy, horror and science fiction literature and film and the alternative perspectives produced by creators of color. This documentary features interviews with major writers, scholars, artists and filmmakers and explores comics, television, film and literature by deconstructing stereotyped images of Black people in the genres. The Invisible Universe documentary ultimately reveals how Black creators have been consciously creating their own universe.

Invisible Universe needs your help! In order to continue this important work, we will need to secure considerable financial support. Your contribution of any size will help make this groundbreaking documentary a reality. Since 2003, the filmmakers have been traveling to conduct interviews nationwide and have been incurring mounting expenses for travel, equipment and supplies to finish this project, most of it coming out of the filmmakers' pockets. We have already accumulated hours of footage and believe with your help, we can bring this feature length documentary to life!


HONORARY COMMITTEE

Linda Addison
Author, Being Full of Light, Insubstantial

Steven Barnes
Author, Lion’s Blood & Zulu Heart

Angel L. Brown
Founder, Our Story Productions

Allison Caviness
Founder, Lesida Film Center

Pete Chatmon
Ceo, Double 7 Film Productions

Sandi Dubowski
Director, Trembling Before G-d

Frances Gateward
Professor of Cinema Studies
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

William & Louise Greaves
William Greeves Productions

Eileen Gunn
Board member, Clarion West Writers Workshop
Editor & Publisher, The Infinite Matrix

Dr. Charles Johnson
Professor, University of Washington

Imagenation Film and Music Festival
Moikgantsi Kgama, Founder & Executive Director
Greg Gates, Executive Producer

Edna Lima
Mestranda (Master), ABADA-Capoeira

Zola Mumford
Curator, The Langston Hughes African American Film Festival

Sheree R. Thomas
Editor, The Dark Matter anthologies, Black Pot Mojo

Cecil Washington
Writer, Cecilwashington.com

Yumy Odom
Founder, 1st World Komix, Inc., ECBACC

William H. Foster III
Professor, Historian, Looking For a Face Like Mine

Maurice Waters,
Founder, ECBACC
Moderator, BlackSciFi.com

HOST COMMITTEE

Shenelle Easton-Foster

Rachel Kadushin
BestFriendsProductions.com

New York Movie Pirate First to be charged with Tougher Camcorder Law

I produced a short film earlier this year about the results of the city of New York being bought out by a major corporation and becoming a police state. Is New York City actually in the early throes of becoming a real police state? What with all the undercover operations, quality of life laws and tougher laws, fines and imprisonments, especially when commerce is at play, I think it is easy to imagine.

And on another Black SF level… please notice that an apparently African man (or Pirate) is the first to "die" in this new dystopian nightmare.

***

From The Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting

August 1, 2007 - A New York area man was arrested by New York City police officers prior to the July Fourth holiday for illegally camcording Dreamworks/Paramount’s Transformers on its opening day in a Bronx movie theater. The defendant is the first to be charged under an amended law passed by the City Council and signed into law May 1 by Mayor Michael Bloomberg that increases penalties for individuals caught recording theatrical films in New York City. The defendant, Kalidou Diallo, faces up to six months imprisonment, fines ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 and a civil penalty up to $5,000.

“Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council have provided New York City police officers with a critical tool to help put movie thieves out of business,” said Dan Glickman, Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). “The New York City economy has much to gain by tackling the monumental problem of movie piracy, and we are especially grateful to the members of the NYPD's Organized Crime Control Bureau for pursuing these crimes with the diligence they require.”

Increased security and surveillance in movie theaters throughout New York City for the summer blockbuster movie season led to the arrest of Diallo who was observed camcording the film by security personnel in the American Theater. Police officers detained Diallo and seized a camcorder and other equipment that he had concealed inside his jacket. Diallo had recorded the entire film and admitted to having illegally recorded other films in the past.

“This tough new law gives us stiff penalties that fit the severity of the crime,” said John Feinblatt, the Mayor’s Criminal Justice Coordinator. “We’re going to keep the heat on the pirates so that the artists who make up our film industry can continue to thrive.”

The MPAA estimates that in 2006, New York City theaters were the origin of 43% of camcorder-source pirated DVDs tracked in the United States, and 20% of pirated movies seized globally.

“Movie piracy is a crime that hurts the City’s economy and the thousands of individuals of who make their living in the film industry,” said Commissioner Katherine Oliver of the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre, and Broadcasting (MOFTB). “The swift action on this recent illegal camcording activity clearly demonstrates the City’s commitment to eradicating this crime.”

According to a recent study commissioned by the MPAA, the New York motion picture industry suffers an estimated $1.49 billion in lost output annually resulting in 22,986 fewer jobs and $903 million in lost earnings as a consequence of global and local piracy of motion pictures. The MPAA-commissioned study found that $637 million in total annual retail sales in New York are lost due to global and local piracy, resulting in a loss of $50 million in State and City sales taxes.

Race, the final frontier article in the Boston Globe

Small mention about the Invisible Universe documentary.
***
Race, the final frontier
Black science-fiction writers bring a unique perspective to the genre
The Boston Globe
By Vanessa E. Jones, Globe Staff | July 31, 2007

Earlier this month at Readercon, a convention for fans of fantasy/science fiction at the Burlington Marriott, Marlin May was one of perhaps two blacks in the room. But that didn't intimidate May. He had just made arrangements to meet a science-fiction writer for dinner, showing how much comfort this fan had found in this world.

"They're the most accepting group of folks I've ever been with," says May, 47, of Lowell.

But Eon Harry, a black man who lives in Somerville, has had a different experience. "I don't feel particularly embraced," says Harry, 41. No sense of community enveloped him when he attended Readercon for the first time last year, though he's not sure whether race or some other factor is to blame.

"I find that readers are an insular lot," Harry says. "It may have had as much to do with the fact that I was a new face."

The June release of "Acacia," the first of a planned trilogy of fantasy books by black historical-fiction writer David Anthony Durham, brought attention to the small number of black writers toiling in what is sometimes called speculative fiction, and the people who read their work. The media took note of Durham as one of only a handful of black authors in the genre. That small group includes veteran Samuel R. Delany and the late Octavia Butler, as well as younger voices such as Nalo Hopkinson, Steven Barnes, and Tananarive Due, and respected writers who have also dabbled in speculative fiction such as Walter Mosley and the late W.E.B. Du Bois.

It's an area of fiction that has allowed writers to tackle sensitive issues of race and culture.

"It has always been the safe genre to talk about those issues," Harry says, "or it had been for years until there was a lot more tolerance for bringing those things up in the mainstream."

But some in the speculative-fiction community complain that a number of their white contemporaries no longer tackle these subjects. Durham, a former Shutesbury resident, was inspired to move into fantasy writing because he saw potential there that others failed to tap into.

"In epic fantasy," says Durham, 38, whose novel is populated by a diverse crowd that includes blond warriors and olive-skinned beauties, "there is a lot of racism and sexism I don't think the good people who are writing it are aware of."

In the last decade, sci-fi/fantasy fans of color have begun creating their own communities. These spaces are necessary in a world where they stand out as geeks among blacks, and as "the other" in the speculative-fiction world. There are conferences such as 2004's "Black to the Future: A Black Science Fiction Festival" in Seattle, and Web communities such as SciFiNoir (groups.yahoo.com/group/scifi noir2), the Carl Brandon Society (carlbrandon.org), and Afrofuturism (afrofuturism.net). The books "Dark Matter" and "Visions of the Third Millennium" show that the black contribution to science fiction goes beyond the well-known names of Delany and Butler. M. Asli Dukan is finishing a documentary about this unique community called "Invisible Universe: A History of Blackness in Speculative Fiction."

"It's tiny," says Nalo Hopkinson, 46, from her Toronto home, of the black sci-fi community. "And it's happening in an environment in which, particularly in the US, to talk about race is to be seen as racist. You become the problem because you bring up the problem. So you find people who are hesitant to talk about it."

It's also complicated. In his essay in "Dark Matter" titled "Racism and Science Fiction," Delany writes about how race constricts black writers. He describes being paired with Hopkinson during a book signing at Readercon in 1998, and how grouping blacks together can affect how they're perceived. "One of [racism's] strongest manifestations is as a socio-visual system in which people become used to always seeing blacks with other blacks and so -- because people are used to it -- being uncomfortable whenever they see blacks mixed in, at whatever proportion, with whites," he wrote.

The tendency to lump all black speculative fiction writers together also fails to acknowledge that these authors don't always tackle racial issues in their work. Robert Devney, 55, a longtime fan who attended the Readercon convention, calls Delany's "Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand" one of his favorite novels. But Devney, who is white, says of Delany's approach to race, "It's occasionally a point he wants to make and many times it isn't a point he wants to make."

But it's hard to ignore the impact that perspectives of color bring to the genre.

"There's not all that many writers yet who can write from the perspective of another race," says Lis Carey, vice president of the New England Science Fiction Association, "and really capture the different kinds of experiences and the different perspectives. If someone is using characters of a different race than themselves and it matters, there's a good chance of it feeling slightly off."

Harry discovered the world of black sci-fi writers accidentally. Friends suggested that he read Butler and Delany, but he hadn't heard about Durham's "Acacia" or about the various websites catering to black sci-fi fans. Harry believes part of the problem is that bookstores often don't prominently display the works of non-white writers in the genre.

"I sort of felt like, 'Wow, I would actually read these people if, A, I knew they were black authors and, B, they were given some shelf space,' " says Harry.

"Black authors bring certain elements into their writing, be it a black protagonist or the situations they find themselves in or even their backgrounds [that] I find easy to relate to," says Harry. "It's not only the blackness of it . . . they often strike really familiar chords that the other authors, because those things aren't part of their own experience, don't hit for me when I'm reading them."

He offers as an example Butler's "Parable of the Sower," whose strong black heroine, Lauren Olamina, battles the ills of society by creating a new faith. "When I read it," says Harry, "I remember thinking the way [Olamina] spoke and the way she held herself reminded me of my aunt and a lot of her opinions."

That connection may not be felt when reading white writers in the genre. While Ursula Le Guin populates her books with diverse characters, writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert Heinlein have been castigated for depictions that some consider racist. "The main mythic story is going to a foreign culture and colonizing it," says Hopkinson. He adds that blacks are part of a growing speculative writing community that includes gays, women, the working class, and other people of color, all of whom offer new takes on the colonialist perspective.

In fact, "Acacia" had been in the back of Durham's mind since the late 1990s. What spurred him to embark on the project was "The Lord of the Rings" films. Durham watched the three movies multiple times, and became increasingly irritated by the almost mono-racial cast of characters.

"I did not love it," Durham says, "that the only people of color who didn't have speaking lines were the minions imported for the dark lords."