February 20, 2020 

By City News Service 

The creators of “Hair Love” were honored today by the Los Angeles City Council for their seven-minute Oscar-winning animated short that explores the challenges a father experiences while trying prepare his daughter's hair.

The film was written and directed by former NFL wide receiver Matthew A. Cherry, who said he wanted to show what black fathers sometimes experience when trying to fix their daughters' hair.

“We really just did this project to do something that young people could see themselves in,” Cherry said. “Animation is an important medium ... I think if we can get more representation in animation, it'll just trickle down to other forms of filmmaking.”

Cherry and co-producer Karen Rupert Toliver, who has worked on various major animation films, were invited to City Hall by Councilman Curren Price.

“The Oscar win comes at a poignant time when black people around this country, especially our students, our kids, are being discriminated against for wearing natural hair styles,” Price said.

He noted that a student in Texas recently was told he could not participate in a graduation ceremony unless he cut his dreadlocks.

The film is mostly without dialogue and uses its characters' expressions and imaginative hyperbole to highlight the difficulties the father experiences in trying to get his daughter's hair ready for a special occasion. Finally, after watching videos online, he's able to make it look the way she wants.

“What you all have done here is changed hearts and minds,” Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson said. “There is nobody that can look atthat film and not come away with a greater sense of sensitivity to what hair means and all the drama that comes with it. Anybody who's black knows hair is drama, especially for African American women.”

Cherry said he funded the film by launching a Kickstarter campaign, reaching his $280,000 goal within a week.

With the win, Toliver became the first African American woman to receive an Oscar in the animated short film category.

“I've worked on a lot of movies, but none of them have impacted me as personally,” she said. “We have ... two black teenage sons who are going to go out in the world, and I realize this was an opportunity to really present positive images of black men so that people can really think about them differently when they walk this earth.”

Toliver, who got her career start on “The Mighty Ducks” franchise, worked to have the short film shown before the start of “The Angry Birds Movie 2” in theaters.

February 20, 2020 

By City News Service 

Actress/singer Ja'net Dubois, best known for her role as outspoken neighbor Willona Woods on the classic sitcom “Good Times” but also as the singer who belted out the iconic theme song “Movin’ On Up” for “The Jeffersons,” died today at age 74, according to an online report.

Citing her family, TMZ.com reported that Dubois died in her sleep overnight at her Glendale home. The family told the website that Dubois had not been ill and had not complained about any recent ailments.

Actress Holly Robinson Peete lamented her death on Twitter.

“We all cherished her as the beloved Willona on #GoodTimes. Got to work with her on Hangin with Mr. Cooper. I followed her around like a puppy dog. She shared so much wisdom. I loved and will miss her dearly,” Peete wrote.

Dubois began her career on Broadway, but went on to appear on a host of classic TV series, including “Sanford and Son,” “Shaft” and “Kojak,” before landing the roll of Willona on “Good Times.” She continued to work steadily over the ensuing years, most recently in the 2016 film “She's Got a Plan.”

She also appeared in films such as “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle,” “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka” and “Tropic Thunder.” She won a pair of Emmy Awards for her voiceover work in the animated series “The PJs.”

Dubois composed and sang the theme song for “The Jeffersons,” which, like “Good Times,” was produced by Norman Lear.

According to TMZ, she is survived by three children.

February 13, 2020 

By Thandisizwe Chimurenga 

Contributing Writer 

Some of the country’s most intense “battles” around gentrification - commonly defined as the renovation or reinvigoration of communities or areas thru the influx of new residents and businesses which leads to the displacement of long-term residents from those same communities or areas - are currently being waged in predominantly Black South L.A. neighborhoods such as Leimert Park, View Park and Windsor Hills. 

Yet and still, the battles of today are not quite as intense as the battles of yesteryear: the battles to gain entry.

“Los Angeles: Displacement in Utopia” is a 20-minute short film that will debut next week at the 28th annual Pan African Film Festival. The film will be shown on Monday, February 17 at 6 p.m. at the Cinemark 15 Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw, and on Wednesday, February 19 at 1:35 p.m. inside of the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza. 

“Displacement in Utopia” examines the history of how racial restrictive covenants developed, who fought against them, and how they were legally struck down in Los Angeles, California, and the nation.

Restrictive covenants were contractual agreements that prohibited the purchasing, leasing or occupying of property by African Americans in certain areas of Los Angeles; basically, any area outside of the Central Avenue corridor where Black people had been segregated since the Great Migration of the 1920s.

“Once again, African Americans in Los Angeles find themselves involved in a struggle for access. In the past, it was the struggle for decent housing and better opportunities through access to non-restricted areas,” said Dr. Karin L. Stanford, former chair of African Studies at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) and a co-creator of the film. 

“Today, its for access to better opportunities and investment that now is being poured into their neighborhoods after years of neglect,” Stanford said.

Long-term residents are displaced through gentrification when landlords increase the rent on their dwellings in hopes of getting more affluent tenants. An added layer in this saga would be those residents who lost their homes through the mortgage crisis of the middle 2000s, as well as residents who seek to move or beneficiaries who seek to sell family homes they inherited. African Americans then become priced out of neighborhoods they have lived in all their lives as both rental payments and home mortgages skyrocket.

A press release for the film on the Bradley Center website states: “Using interviews, video footage, and photographs, the documentary examines African American migration and settlement as well as the triumphs and hardships experienced as they sought to overcome systemic/institutional racist exclusionary in the new “Utopia.”  

Throughout the film, the audience will witness African Americans’ creative use of legal strategies to fight restrictive covenants, enlistment of proxy buyers, and establishment of real estate institutions to support their efforts to purchase real property and land.

The short film features many of those whose efforts were instrumental in dismantling Los Angeles’ restrictive covenants such as attorney Loren Miller, who would later go on to publish the California Eagle newspaper; Miller led the legal charge for fair and equal housing opportunity via the Supreme Court; Oscar-winning actress Hattie McDaniel, a resident of the “Sugar Hill” neighborhood in what is now West Adams; and singer Nat “King” Cole whose family faced intense racism after moving into the Hancock Neighborhood. 

The mini documentary is a project of the Tom and Ethel Bradley Center housed at California State University, Northridge. It was written, produced and directed by the team of Stanford, Keith Rice, historian and Bradley Center archivist, and Pilar de Haro, a former student of journalism at CSUN.

According to its website, the mission of the Tom and Ethel Bradley Center is to collect, preserve and disseminate the visual history of the region with an emphasis on ethnic minority communities and photographers. 

Named for Los Angeles’ first African American mayor and his wife, the Bradley Center archives contain over one million images from Los Angeles based freelance and independent photographers from the 1930s to the present. Eighty percent (80%) of the collection is comprised of the works of African American photographers in and near Los Angeles.