Body of Work: Cheryl Fabio

A retrospective glance at films and filmmakers who have shaped local culture.

$5 admission each night

Describing her work as Soft Politics, Cheryl Fabio has been working in documentary film since 1976. After receiving a B.A. in Sociology and Photography at Fisk University and M.A. in Documentary Film Production at Stanford, Fabio started freelancing and eventually became a producer/director for KTOP TV, a public access television station in Oakland. In addition to working with community-based organizations, Fabio was Program Director at Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in Oakland, CA, and taught at City College of San Francisco. 

Cheryl is the founder and director of the Sarah Webster Fabio Center for Social Justice, named after her mother, the great revolutionary poet. She continues to work on documentary films. Thanks to a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation, the Black Film Center Archive at Indiana University preserved Cheryl Fabio’s 1976 documentary film Rainbow Black: Poet Sarah W. Fabio, a legacy of her mother and her work.

The host for the September 21 screening is Jamal Batts. 
 
Jamal Batts, PhD is a scholar, writer, and curator. His work considers the relation between black contemporary art, sexuality, and risk. He is an Assistant Professor at Swarthmore College in the Black Studies Program. Before that, he served as a Stanford University IDEAL Provostial Fellow in the Department of Art and Art History. As a Curator-in-Residence in the Fine Arts Department at the University of Pennsylvania, he curated the 2022 MFA thesis exhibition, Imperative of Struggle. His writing appears in the catalogue for The New Museum’s exhibition Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon, Open Space, ASAP/J, New Life Quarterly, and SFMOMA’s website in conjunction with their Modern Cinema series. He is a member of the curatorial collective The Black Aesthetic, who have curated four seasons of Black experimental film screenings and released three edited books.

Thursday, September 21, 7:00 PM

Rainbow Black: Poet Sarah W. Fabio

(1976, USA, 31 min)

Rainbow Black: Poet Sarah W. Fabio (1976, USA, 31 min)

The retrospective will commence on Thursday, September 21, at 7:00 PM with the screening of the pivotal documentary "Rainbow Black: Poet Sarah W. Fabio." A deeply personal project for Cheryl Fabio, this film delves into the life and work of her mother Sarah Webster Fabio. The film portrays a multifaceted and complex portrayal of Sarah Fabio, often hailed as the "Mother of Black Studies" and a prominent figure within the Black Power movement of the sixties and seventies.

“It’s very personal, it’s very moving,” she said. “... Never for a minute do I regret having made that film.” Cherly shares with East Bay Express (2014). 

Evolutionary Blues…West Oakland’s Music Legacy (2017, USA, 90 min)
Watch as more than 30 local musicians share their inspiration and describe the trajectory of the Oakland Blues: how it evolved and what it has become. In this film, Fabio gives homage to the thriving, self-sustaining Black community of Oakland’s 7th Street and those artists who regularly played the clubs and music venues of the neighborhood before a charge of “urban renewal” decimated the community.

“African Americans are feeling pushed out of Oakland, and we’re a very rich part of Oakland,” said Cheryl Fabio, who directed the film. “To sit this history back into the center, where it’s being articulated … is to place Oakland back into our cultural concept of that period and tie it together.” (East Bay Express, 2017)