Storyteller’s Festival 2023

Join us for the second annual, Storyteller’s Poetry, Music, Arts, and Film Festival on Thursday, April 13^th from 12:00pm-6:30pm. This event showcases student creations while supporting local artists, and will host live music performances, a spoken word event, a writing workshop, a film screening with Q&A, food trucks, and more! This festival is in collaboration with the Writing Center, Black People in the Inland Empire, the Community Engagement Center, Media Arts for Social Justice, the Campus Life Committee, the William James Association, Pitzer College Black Student Union and the Native Indigenous Student Union and is free and open to the public.

Festival Vendor Registration Link

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeFmnsDr73Mvr4Ap-5e87Nha-1Kx9AyZEFpSQF78p0zETm3LQ/viewform

FESTIVAL SCHEDULE:

12:00-5:00PM Food Trucks on the Mounds, Local Arts Vendors in McConnel Living Room

12:00PM @ McConnel Apron – DJ John West will open the festival

12:30PM – Creative Writing Workshop hosted by Stephanie Liu-Rojas – McConnell Atrium

1:00PM @McConnell Apron – Live Music of White White Buffalo & Wanbli Ohitika Win – Native American artists and activists Dani Doll and Juliana Brown Eyes will perform new music from the She’s an Eagle in Flight Tour 2023.

2:00PM @McConnell Apron – Spoken Word Set hosted by Pitzer College Black Student Union

FILM SCREENING – Registration Link

https://forms.gle/QWzqjvk6CPseRtcE8

2:30PM @Benson Auditorium – Art & Krimes by Krimes – award winning documentary about an artist who labors over a number of years on a secret masterpiece, and through this act of daily creative process finds a way to survive incarceration

4:00PM @Benson Auditorium – Encore screening of Art & Krimes

5:45PM @Benson Auditorium – Conversation & Q&A with Asia Johnson hosted by Sadie Scott. Asia Johnson is a writer, storyteller, and filmmaker who has worked with several organizations in the criminal justice reform space, including The Bail Project, cut50, Shakespeare in Prison, Prison Creative Arts Program, Hamtramck Free School, and the Michigan Prison Doula Initiative. Asia is a 2019 Right of Return Fellow, 2019 Room Project Fellow, 2021 Brennan Center for Justice Fellow, 2022 Art for Justice grantee, and a 2022 Highland Leader. Her Chapbook, An Exorcism, was released in 2018 and her directorial debut, Out of Place, was released in 2022

Crystal Diaries documentary screening

Crystal Diaries is a feature-length documentary that shares the intimate stories of five members of the LGTBQ House and Ball community in Los Angeles whose lives have been impacted by the struggle with methamphetamine addiction. This film is intended to provide solidarity, conversations around healing, and representations that mainstream media has neglected.

Crystal Diaries was produced over three semesters in the Media Arts for Social Justice (MASJ) course in collaboration with Enyce Smith and Ryku Bella and was featured in both the FUSION LGBTQ film Festival and OUTFEST in 2021.

There will be a Q&A following the screening with collaborating filmmakers Enyce Smith and Ryku Bella, along with Thomas Davis & Daveione Williams, community artists/activists, and featuring a harm reduction presentation by current MASJ students.