Savanna Washington
Savanna received her M.F.A. in Directing from City College in New York in 2010. While attending City College she was awarded a Colin Powell Graduate Fellowship, the first filmmaker to be honored. As a community activist and activist educator, Savanna has used her life to effect change. Ms. Washington has over 25 years experience as a college professor and over 20 years experience as a writer, director, and activist.
Savanna founded Aardvark Alley Films in 2005. In talking about her work Savanna says, “Aardvark Alley Films is where film meets activism to work towards a better world.” Her last film, “Playing Frisbee in North Korea,” is now having its U.S. national broadcast through American Public Television and can be seen on-demand through PBS Passport. Ms. Washington travelled to North Korea to shoot for the film. The film began at a conference on Korean reunification sponsored by General Colin Powell and the Colin Powell Center. Savanna has Produced, Written and Directed four feature films (two narrative and two documentary), over a dozen shorts including short documentary pieces on the 2023 COP 28 climate conference in Dubai. (CreativelySpeakingFilms.com)
In August of 2022, Savanna began as Creative Program Director at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School as part of the Creatively Speaking Film Series. Creatively Speaking was founded by Michelle Materre, Professor Emeritus at The New School where she served as its Creative Strategy Director at the Institute on Race, Power & Political Economy at The New School (the Institute) until her untimely death in Spring, 2022. To honor Michelle’s legacy the Institute is continuing her work there.
Savanna was an Associate Professor at San Diego City College from 1998-2005 where she taught business technology. She has taught with City University of New York (CUNY) since 2009 and The New School since 2016. Savanna has also taught in Brooklyn with BricArts aka “Free Speech TV” – teaching production and editing classes to community producers.
At CUNY she developed an “Activism Class” as part of her Intro to Contemporary Media class which she brought to The New School and taught to graduate students. As a survey course, students take what they have learned in class and create their own media project around a cause they care about. Students have done work addressing police brutality, fighting for the rights of “Dreamers,” sexual orientation, climate justice, food rights, and STD prevention amongst teens among other subjects. Savanna has presented academic papers on “Race in Media,” at academic conferences in Istanbul, Turkey and Venice, Italy.
Through Creatively Speaking (CreativelySpeakingFilms.com) and her filmmaking work, Savanna’s main focus today is Environmental Justice. The theme for the Fall 2023 film program that Savanna produced was: “One World: Climate & Humanity – Fighting Loss and Displacement.” In Spring, 2024 Savanna produced the first annual “Harlem Earth Day.” Savanna’s next film project, “The Greening of the Bronx: An Urban Garden Tale,” looks at the challenges and solutions Black and Brown urban environmental activists are bringing to the table in the Bronx and nation-wide. It is scheduled to appear on public television Spring 2025.
