Full Out

Let Go and Let God

Rashida Webb-Miller in Let Go and Let God.

Let Go and Let God (2015)

Created, starring, and written by: Rashida Webb-Miller*

Rashida Webb-Miller’s Let Go and Let God was one of the first short films released by OTV and represents our desire to connect other art forms like dance to TV. When we see movement on TV, we’re most likely to see it in sensationalized contexts where dancers are supporting big pop stars or competitive contexts like Dancing with the Stars or America’s Got Talent. Rarely do we see dance for dance sake. 

In the near completely silent film, Rashida’s character spends almost the entire time not moving. She is depressed. We are not told why. Instead we are invited into her mundane day-to-day: getting groceries, walking up her stairs, watching TV. It is unglamorous. 

The character reaches a breaking point when they remember a photograph of an ultrasound in her bathroom. She sobs uncontrollably in the shower. It’s a breathtaking performance. 

“I want to be clear that this isn’t saying ‘Oh just pray and the depression will go away,’” Rashida wrote for the OTV website. “It’s about letting go of the need to control our image to the point where we would rather make ourselves sick or even die than be vulnerable enough to receive and transform.”

We end the film knowing the character has ended a pregnancy–or had it ended (after the film’s release, Rashida wrote an essay about how her experience with abortion inspired the film). But the acknowledgement of the pain has given her a window to move forward. In the end, it is movement, and specifically a form of praise-dancing, that helps her heal.

To produce that moment, Rashida was aided by a crew entirely composed of Black women, including OTV’s Head of Production Stephanie Jeter, director Zarinah Ali, and cinematographer Zakkiyyah Najeebah. They worked for over 12 hours to film everything in one day. 

For Rashida, praise dancing was her first form of movement, but as she aged she realized that Black women were often policed for the way they danced. Anything too sensual was seen in the church as ungodly. So as an adult, Rashida, who is queer, taught classes to women on how to embrace their power through sensual dance. She has seen how many women are able to confront and navigate trauma and pain through movement and community, which we can see in the film and its production. 

“The whole point was that you had this experience and then you kind of are spiraling into isolation.  And the isolation is what further exacerbates the depression and the grief and the guilt. Once you have that system and community of women who also have that same experience and they can lift you up and hold you, the sistering together literally to kind of heal and move forward,” Rashida said in an interview. 

Let Go and Let God premiered in November 2015 alongside our three scripted pilots (You ’re So Talented, Nupita Obama, Southern for Pussy) at the nonprofit Woman Made Gallery as a featured event for Chicago Artists Month, sponsored by the city of Chicago. Responses to that premiere focused primarily on the diversity of people and themes, including narrative (genres, form) and gender diversity. In March 2016, we hosted a separate screening for Let Go and Let God integrating performance: Rashida conducted a free erotic dance class at Dance Center Chicago in Lincoln Square, coupled with a screening of the film and discussion led by playwright and activist Kristiana Rae Colon. There, our post-screening discussion among five Black feminine-spectrum attendees focused on how dance and spirituality offer ways to cope and heal from personal, social, political, and economic trauma. Rashida used the screening to open up about her experience with depression and how her dance practice is her “preventative care.” Each participant saw something different in the pilot: One focused on the theme of unchanging daily routine and two on the cleansing power of water (one because she thinks of and goes to Lake Michigan and one because she thinks of God when in need of restoration).

We can connect the themes of water and blood, both of which are necessary for us to move, as a lesson in the power of dance as a Black feminist healing practice. 

“After all, the lack of movement is what causes us to feel stuck or stagnant–literally allowing the stress to overwhelm us to the point that the blood vessels become clogged and the heart stops or we bring on a stroke. Movement - dance allows us to open those pathways in the body back up so we function normally and keep thriving and keep living. Viscerally opening ourselves back up to the presence of Spirit and the Divine,” Rashida wrote. 

In more recent years, Rashida made the decision to release her father’s name KhanBey and embrace the family name of her Grandfather Oscar C. Webb. In honor of her mother’s transition and in closing the generational cycles of abuse her name will now be listed on all public works as Rashida Webb-Miller.

*Let Go and Let God was published under a different name: “In more recent years, Rashida made the decision to release her father’s name KhanBey and embrace the family name of her Grandfather Oscar C. Webb. In honor of her mother’s transition and in closing the generational cycles of abuse her name will now be listed on all public works as Rashida Webb-Miller.”

Watch Let Go and Let God on OTV!

Two Queens in a Kitchen

Saya Naomi and Erik Wallace in Two Queens in a Kitchen.

Two Queens in a Kitchen: Season 3 (2018)

Created and directed by: Elijah McKinnon

Two Queens in a Kitchen is exactly what the title says: two queer, trans, or femme-identified people in a kitchen making a healthy snack and talking. 

Creator Elijah McKinnon crafted the show as a platform to elevate the artists both on OTV and in our broader community to have frank, organic conversations in the place most Americans gather: the kitchen. As OTV’s head of marketing at the time, it was a creative way to shine a light on the people co-creating the platform behind and in front of the camera, at a time when it was harder for OTV to earn media in the mainstream press. It was also one way Elijah highlighted the many creative people they supported through their consultancy, where they were developing artists outside of OTV.

For Elijah, an expert chef, the kitchen connects them to their family history, a place of connection, nourishment, and artistic mastery. In a country where most food and culture is processed and manufactured by white corporations, Two Queens in a Kitchen honors how queer people of color joyfully sustain themselves outside of harmful institutions. 

The artists featured on Two Queens in a Kitchen are wide-ranging in terms of identity, cultural skills and roles. Season one featured writers and directors Ricardo Gamboa (Brujos) and Sam Bailey (You’re So Talented), who were creating series for OTV, but also Roy Kinsey and Darling Squire, independent artists in music and dance who were working both with OTV and with Elijah in their other projects. Season two added an in-studio audience and featured community leaders like SAIC professor Oli Rodriguez and Kristen Kaza, with whom Elijah founded their Reunion community space in Humboldt Park, alongside onscreen talent like Rashaad Hall (Brown Girls), Nathaniel Tennenbaum (Kissing Walls) and Felicia Holman (Futurewomen). 

Always one to outdo themselves, Elijah shifted formats in Season 3 by making it a two-hour livestreamed program and more focused on a particular Black cuisine: southern food. Hosted by Northwestern University professor, dean and at the time chair of the OTV board Dr. E. Patrick Johnson (also an expert chef), the series featured two of OTV’s most consistent stars Erik Lamar Wallace and Saya Naomi alongside independent writers Britt Julious and Ashley Ray. Mister Wallace performance a live set to an in-studio audience. 

As one of OTV’s longest-running series and perhaps the most representative of its diverse artist roster, Two Queens in a Kitchen represents how Elijah connected their many skills: original unscripted directing and producing, culinary arts, live music and performance, interdisciplinary conversations and platform marketing, all in a colorful, thoughtful and edifying package. 

Watch Two Queens in a Kitchen on OTV!

Nupita Obama Creates Vogua

Saya Naomi in Nupita Obama Creates Vogua.

Nupita Obama Creates Vogua (2015)

Created and directed by: Aymar Jean Christian

Written by: Aymar Jean Christian, with Erik Lamar Wallace, Kiam Junio and Saya Naomi

Produced by: Myra Boone

Nupita Obama Creates Vogua is a pilot for a series, Nupita Obama, focusing on gender nonconforming artists of color who use performance to smooth social, economic and sexual situations. It’s a play on polyamorous living and the ways queer people of color navigate conflict to create new models for family. 

In Nupita, performance becomes technology for cultivating queer relationships. I devised the idea of vogua, combining voguing and yoga, inspired both by my own physical fitness practices for surviving Chicago ’s winters and by the artists in my community who practiced these forms, including Kiam Marcelo Junio, a performance artist and yogi; Erik Lamar Wallace, a hip-hop artist and vogue dancer; and Saya Naomi, a drag queen. I wrote the pilot with the clear direction that they would contribute their art and writing. Collectively, the three of them created an image of vogua. We met for two rehearsals in which they workshopped vogua together and read through the script, adjusting lines to feel natural as they went.

Nupita was an experiment in expanding who gets to be seen as a TV writer. Each change to the script reflected Kiam, Wallace and Saya’s intimate relationship to their identities, communities and crafts. Kiam added “making love, marking art” to the first lines for Erik ’s character, to suggest collaboration and polyamory more strongly; they also both changed the yoga chant I ’d written to one that more specifically reflected the theme of peace and adjusted the lines they say in the yoga class scene to reflect what they actually say as yoga instructors. Erik changed a line where the character proposes vogua as yoga set to “Black queer music” (my language) to “cunt beats,” the term used in ball culture to describe performances of “ultimate femininity” (Bailey, 2011), and a line referring to Gia “dancing” to “Gia can shake her ass,” closer to quare vernacular. As former member of a house, Erik changed my line, “I ’m not going to try to one-up Willie Ninja” (a famous voguer who choreographed for Madonna), to “You can ’t just adopt a legendary house name. You have to be inducted,” a way to make the line more specific and informative. After the line, “How about Knowles?,” when the three troubleshoot Nupita ’s house name that would become “Obama,” Erik added, “That [Knowles] is a legendary house name,” which is something house members might say in joking about Beyoncé Knowles-Carter.

Queer POC artists often learn multiple crafts as a survival strategy, and this work brings tremendous “production value,” extending my limited resources. In Vogua they did their own choreography and costumes. Most of the set comes from the art and materials of Kiam Marcelo Junio, a performance artist and yoga instructor who plays Reyes. Saya Naomi, a drag queen who plays Gia, did make up. But queer performance extends traditional notions of production value beyond craft, where Hollywood clearly outdoes and outspends indie fare, to include sincere, specific cultural performances major studios find elusive. Vogua’s hip hop soundtrack is mostly from Erik “Mister” Wallace, who plays Curtis, along with local DJs Hijo Pródijo and Jeremiah Meece, with a cameo from Cakes Da Killa; Mister Wallace debuted the first single, “Whoremoan,” off her EP, Faggot, on the day of Vogua’s online release. All the artists changed their lines to reflect how they would speak and in particular how queers of color speak to each other.

Before we put it online we premiered Vogua in July 2015 in three Chicago neighborhoods where each of the artists live or work. Kiam hosted their premiere in a loft in Pilsen, known in the queer community for its large stage and for hosting a number of art events and parties. Saya hosted in Wicker Park at an artist-run space near her home, whereas Erik hosted in Lakeview at a bar where she started her career as a host and rapper. Each artist prepared a performance for the premiere. Surveys with guests after the screenings suggested many attendees knew the artists and were diverse in race, gender, sexuality, income and education, though all were under 45. In interviews they expressed a desire to see more of the series with more queer performance (dance, shade, sex) and character development. Meanwhile artists expressed pleasure at seeing their talent showcased among their community, particularly Saya, who got ready for drag in front of the audience, revealing drag’s under-appreciated labor, and said: “I don’t get that kind of support from Chicago people!…This is real. This is respect.”

Watch Nupita Obama Creates Vogua on OTV!

You’re So Talented

You’re So Talented (2015-16)

Created, directed and produced by: Sam Bailey

You’re So Talented follows Bea, a down-on-her-luck artist as she navigates the inevitable dramas of her twenties, and the community that supports her. Written, produced, starring and directed by created Sam Bailey, it’s an intimate, artisanal work that bravely asserts Black women’s right to be imperfect and vulnerable. 

You’re So Talented has essential to the creation of OTV. Before seeing the series I had initially planned to simply distribute pilots through OTV, but Sam’s series showed me that Chicago was becoming a hub for quality full-fledged series. In late 2014 while I was directing the first pilot, Sam emailed me requesting I write about the series for my blog, Televisual, which I was in the process of sunsetting because blogging didn’t count for tenure. When I watched the first “rough” cut of the pilot, I was immediately blown away by the richness of the writing, acting and direction. It struck me as one of the most confident series debuts I had seen since I started tracking the market in 2009. I had to release it. With a pilot and series, I felt that was enough to start a network. The first season premiered in March 2015 as OTV’s first premiere! Today it is still one of a handful of series on OTV to make it to a second season. 

You’re So Talented is a full meal. Beautifully shot and sincerely acted, the series recalls the neorealist, open-ended narrative structure of midcentury cinema, from Sembene to Godard. Sam uses Bea’s friends, family, and love interests and community as a lens through which to explore her growth, providing a platform for emerging talent like Shea Couleé, Jeez Loueez and Ashleigh LaThrop. It’s also a love letter to Chicago, where Sam is from, featuring new and iconic locations like Victory Gardens Theater, the 606, the “L” and more (including the Lakeview apartment I lived in for 10 years and hosted many OTV artists). 

The series is one of the most critically acclaimed on OTV. The series premiered its fourth episode on the Tribeca Film Festival’s website as part of its new New Online Work program, and was nominated for a Gotham Award for Breakthrough Short Form Series.

For the second season, Sam took on the role of director, a career game-changer. Today, Sam Bailey is in consistent demand for writing directing, with credits on Netflix’s Dear White People, Disney’s Ironheart, Facebook/MTV’s Loosely Exactly Nicole, freeform’s Grown-ish, along with her indie work on on series like Brown Girls and East of La Brea. When viewing the exhibition and engagement of You’re So Talented, it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that the second season was Sam’s directorial debut, and she now stands as one of very few black women consistently directing for television in Hollywood.

You’re So Talented Data

CHICAGO SCREENINGS - ATTENDANCE

Below is the estimated attendance for OTV-hosted screenings in Chicago. You’re So Talented had three official screenings in Chicago, all three taking place at The Whistler, a bar in Logan Square, the neighborhood Sam Bailey grew up in. The Whistler is an intimate space, with a maximum occupancy of 100 people.

The series has been screened in other instances in the city. The University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art screened the first season one week before its official finale, and Chicago Filmmakers screened parts of the series at the Chicago Cultural Center after the second season finale.

SEASON 1 FINALE

30

SEASON 2 PREMIERE

100

SEASON 2 FINALE

60

CHICAGO SCREENINGS - COMMUNITY FEEDBACK (S2 FINALE)

What stood out to you in the series?

“Honesty. The acting the the portal of life. The episode was relatable and the characters were appropriate for the world.”

“All the beautiful and different types of women and the spaces used.”

“Diversity and interesting friction between human relationships.”

PRESS

“You’re So Talented is, without doubt, an intriguing web series that’s worth watching. In Bea, Black millennial women now have a relatable protagonist we can invest in.”

Bitch Media, March 27, 2017

“Bailey’s portrayal of Bea is not only honest and true, but powerful, raw and darkly funny. It's no wonder the series was honored at this year's Tribeca Film Festival as part of the N.O.W Project, which recognizes superlative online creators.”

IndieWire, May 1, 2015

FESTIVAL EXHIBITION

TribecaFilm.com (NOW—New Online Work Program), April 2015, (Episode 4)

Season two trailer premiere, Chicago International Film Festival, AMC River East, October 23, 2015

Watch You’re So Talented on OTV!