Filmmakers and Producers

Ada Gay Griffin

The executive director of Third World Newsreel from 1988 to 1998, Ada Gay Griffin directed the award-winning documentary film, A Litany for Survival: the Life and Work of Audre Lorde with Michelle Parkerson for Third World Newsreel. The full-length documentary film was released in 1995 with exclusive interviews of the warrior poet, and her contemporaries, revealing one of the most powerful voices for the inclusion of LGBT liberation in the self-determination goals of Africa’s diaspora.

Griffin is currently a nonprofit sector management specialist working in the areas of arts programming, organization and fund management, and strategic planning supporting cultural and educational institutions, community and economic development, human services, and social justice.

AVAILABLE FROM TWN

Can't Jail the Revolution and Break the Walls Down
Kenyatta Tyehimba & Ada Gay Griffin
Producer: Third World Newsreel
1991, 60 min., Color, US
These two 30 minute videos use footage compiled from over 40 social justice media productions to chronicle the perspectives of political prisoners and of war within the United States. Historical footage is combined with interviews of activists from revolutionary movements waged by African Americans...

A Litany For Survival: the Life and Work of Audre Lorde (90)
Ada Gay Griffin & Michelle Parkerson
Producer: Third World Newsreel
1996, 90 min., Color, US
An epic portrait of the eloquent, award-winning Black, lesbian, poet, mother, teacher and activist, Audre Lorde, whose writings -- spanning five decades -- articulated some of the most important social and political visions of the century. From Lorde's childhood roots in NYC's Harlem to her battle w...

A Litany For Survival: the Life and Work of Audre Lorde
Ada Gay Griffin & Michelle Parkerson
Producer: Third World Newsreel
1995, 52 min., Color, US
An epic portrait of the eloquent, award-winning Black, lesbian, poet, mother, teacher and activist, Audre Lorde, whose writings -- spanning five decades -- articulated some of the most important social and political visions of the century. From Lorde's childhood roots in NYC's Harlem to her battle w...


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TWN acknowledges that in New York we are on the unceded territory of the Lenni Lenape, Canarsie, Shinecock, and Munsee peoples and challenges the harm that continues to be inflicted upon Indigenous and People of Color communities here and abroad, which is why we all need to be part of the struggle for rights, equality and justice.

TWN is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Color Congress, MOSAIC, New York Community Trust, Peace Development Fund, Ford Foundation, Golden Globe Foundation, Kolibri Foundation and individual donors.