We recently connected with Danielle Scruggs and have shared our conversation below.
Danielle, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
Black Women Directors is certainly a meaningful project for me. I started it as a Tumblr in 2015 to highlight and celebrate the work of Black women and nonbinary filmmakers from around the globe. It has now expanded into a digital library with about 130+ entries and counting.
This digital library is designed to serve as a celebration of their artistry and excellence because too often, Black women and nonbinary filmmakers’ contributions to the film canon have been underplayed or outright ignored. Black Women Directors is designed to serve as a hub to highlight and celebrate those contributions and foster the further hiring of Black women and nonbinary filmmakers within the industry.
Danielle, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Black Women Directors is a digital library that originally started as a Tumblr in 2015. I wanted to create a place that highlighted and celebrated the work of Black women and non-binary filmmakers from across the globe because I noticed in a lot of conversations around film, Black women and non-binary directors were being either left out of them entirely or their contributions were downplayed. And statistically, despite many improvements over the years, the film industry is very male-dominated. So I wanted to create a space that celebrated their work and their innovations.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
My particular mission for Black Women Directors is to make sure that folks who have been traditionally marginalized are seen and that their voices are amplified.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
I can’t say I have a particular story on how I built my audience on social media. I think my audience grew based on word of mouth and other people in the film industry reposting and sharing the site and the content I was sharing on social. I’ll admit, I don’t have the biggest social media presence; I don’t have a million followers on Instagram and TikTok but the audience I have is very engaged and also so encouraging of my work.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.blackwomendirectors.co
- Instagram: instagram.com/blkwmndirectors
- Twitter: twitter.com/blkwmndirectors
- TikTok: tiktok.com/@blackwomendirectors
Image Credits
Headshot – Danielle Finney Website screenshots — design by Good + Ready Design Co. – https://www.goodready.co/