In 1994, Yvonne Welbon (Communication doctorate ’01) became the first Black woman to receive a master’s in fine arts degree with a concentration in film and video from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. While she made history at school, she realized one thing was missing from her education: Despite two years of film school, she could name only one Black female director.
When she talked to her professors to learn more, one responded by telling Welbon she could be the second — an answer Welbon said was “ridiculous.”
That moment, combined with the Art Institute’s lack of films featuring Black women, inspired Welbon’s life work.
“I set out to find my sisters in cinema, and it was really because of the absence of knowledge that I knew was there,” Welbon said.
In 1997, she began creating an online database, culling together information about the history of Black women filmmakers.
Nearly 30 years later, Welbon’s dream of increased visibility for Black female filmmakers manifested itself in Sisters in Cinema’s Media Arts Center, launched in March 2024 in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood. Since then, the space, located at 2310 E 75th St., has hosted screenings, educational programs and events in its 35-seat theater. The center is aimed towards helping Black female and gender-expansive mediamakers realize their potential with the goal of maintaining a visible legacy of their work.
“What happened to me in film school, I don’t want that to happen to anybody else ever again,” Welbon said.
Curating the archive
The idea for Sisters in Cinema began with Welbon’s experience as a master’s student in film school. During her time between undergraduate and graduate school, Welbon lived in Taipei, Taiwan for six years, where she established an arts magazine.
In the fifth year of the magazine’s publication, Welbon attended a conference in Thailand focused on video — a novelty media during the ’90s. She was inspired to transition her magazine from traditional print to a “video-zine” and was introduced to the Taiwanese Native Soil Movement, which championed the creation of films in Taiwanese as opposed to Mandarin.
“I was really inspired by their work, by the filmmakers,” Welbon said.
After a motor scooter accident and five months of recovery, Welbon returned to the U.S. and enrolled in video and film classes at SAIC. These classes motivated her to pursue a master’s degree, which she received from the school in 1994.
After graduating, Welbon knew there was still more to learn and began pursuing her doctorate at Northwestern. Welbon said she enjoyed the University’s Communication Ph.D. program because it required students to study film production.
Her time at NU culminated into a dissertation on the history of Black female filmmakers, which Welbon said was the first of its kind. The dissertation and Welbon’s ongoing database led her to create a feature-length documentary titled “Sisters in Cinema.”
After graduating with her Ph.D., Welbon curated programming at media arts centers around the U.S., wrote articles about Black women filmmakers and attended film festivals. Through this work, she expanded her database, which has become “one of the largest archives of African American women mediamakers’ work,” she said.
Building the programming
The media arts center was the culmination of Welbon’s work archiving and documenting Black women’s film history. The center, open on Saturdays, is home to free programming, spanning multiple forms of media.
Myana Zhané serves as the center’s coordinator, a role she said consists of “a little bit of everything.”
Zhané said she has always felt a connection to filmmaking because she grew up in a family of historians. Gifted a camera when she was younger, Zhané has been making films since elementary school, she said.
“The art of storytelling is really cool to me,” Zhané said. “Regardless of any medium, people are really creative.”
Zhané met Welbon while working as an archival researcher on another project. After the two met, Zhané assisted at some events for Sisters in Cinema and later applied in 2025 to receive money from a grant provided to the nonprofit by the Ford Foundation, which aimed to sponsor Michigan filmmakers like Zhané, who is originally from Flint, Michigan.
Through the opportunity, Zhané said she began working with Sisters in Cinema full-time, engaging in a variety of programming. One of her favorites is the Reel Innovators Program, geared toward helping emerging Black women and gender-expansive filmmakers market their films and prepare for post-screening Q&As.
Filmmaker Kin Marie participated in the Reel Innovators Program and won the program’s $250 marketing plan award in 2024.
“That was really the first time that an organization very directly nurtured and trained me,” Marie said.
Marie said they now return annually to help mentor the individuals going through the program, a rewarding process as a South Shore native herself.
Though the organization got its start with filmmaking, its programming expands across all forms of media. Anna DeShawn serves as the organization’s director of people and culture, working to make sure operations run smoothly.
As one of her responsibilities, DeShawn oversees the center’s podcasting for beginners course, which she said is “absolutely a joy.”
“Podcasting and filmmaking are cousins out here looking to uplift stories that folks often don’t hear about,” DeShawn said.
DeShawn has most enjoyed furthering the mission of Sisters in Cinema since she began working at the nonprofit earlier this year. Centering Black women and gender-expansive filmmakers has been an incredibly unique opportunity, she said.
“There’s just nowhere in the city, and I would venture to say nowhere in the country, that’s doing that,” DeShawn said.
Fostering representation, community building
Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood has historically been underfunded and underrepresented. Welbon, who grew up and lives in South Shore, said she took that into consideration before establishing the center in the neighborhood. Sisters in Cinema consulted its residents about what they expected from the center through surveys and focus groups.
“When you’re creating something in a community, you want to have the community be involved with it,” Welbon said.
The focus groups helped Welbon develop the center’s programming. Specifically, a meeting with a group of 18 to 24-year-olds inspired the Reel Innovators Program, she said. They expressed interest in screening their own films, highlighting the need for a space for emerging artists.
The nonprofit further engages with the community through the development of an oral history project known as South Shore Remembers, which shares narratives from South Shore natives who lived there in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. Ahsha Davis, the center’s manager who spearheaded the project, said part of her role entails serving as a “partner and neighbor” to those in the South Shore community.
Sisters in Cinema’s work aims to fight against the systems trying to tear women and gender-expansive people of color down, Davis said.
DeShawn said the center wanted to ensure that its presence contributed to the community. Part of the way the center does this, DeShawn said, is through active membership in the South Shore Chamber of Commerce.
“(Welbon) wanted to make sure that this community, this media center didn’t just parachute into the community, that it was a part of the fabric of the community,” DeShawn said. “You can feel that when you come into the center. We want to be in South Shore, and the South Shore community members who are very active in all the ways.”
The organization also works to address disparities in media representation, which Welbon said are more gender-based than race-based. More parity exists for Black male filmmakers than for Black female and gender-expansive filmmakers and mediamakers, she said.
Women make up almost 50% of the population, yet only 8% of directors in 2025 were women, according to a study conducted by NPR. Welbon said this fact is harming the way stories are told and diffused throughout culture.
“Without our stories, generations of people are losing an understanding of what happened,” she said.
DeShawn said representation has become increasingly important as attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion continue.
“There are so many Black women, girls and gender-expansive filmmakers and mediamakers out here that need a space that centers them and their humanity,” DeShawn said. “This is so incredibly important right now that those types of opportunities remain available and accessible too, especially in the community of South Shore, which has been historically underfunded.”
Maintaining the legacy
Welbon said the nonprofit is focused on building a “legacy path,” ensuring that it is wholly impactful. Welbon recalled an encounter she had at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008 with filmmaker Dee Rees.
Rees approached Welbon at the festival and told her that during college, she printed out all of the Black female directors published on Welbon’s online database and put their names on her wall.
“She didn’t go to film school by herself like I did,” Welbon said. “She was equipped with the history.”
Welbon said this story was “rewarding,” since it showed the impact of her work.
One of Sisters in Cinema’s biggest ongoing goals is fundraising. Welbon hopes to raise a $10 million endowment to keep the organization running “forever” and continue its role as a beneficial addition to the South Shore community.
“We’re not silent. We’re not quiet about the work that we do. We’re very loud about it, and we’re very active in continuing it,” Davis said. “We’re not giving up just because some laws are being passed that don’t support us. We’re going to fight harder, we’re going to work harder and we’re going to stay in South Shore to do that work.”
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