Please join BVFCC in supporting the 2023 NH Documentary Festival’s Opening Night featuring BLACK BARBIE, directed by Lagueria Davis on Thursday, October 12 at 6 pm. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Blackbarbiefilm producer Aaliyah Williams hosted by Babz Rawls Ivy of 103.5 WNHH Radio!
Please click HERE for tickets.
A documentary about Black female representation through the history of Black Barbie.
Love her or hate her, almost everyone has a Barbie story. Even if they don’t have a story, there’s a story as to why they don’t have a story. In this film, we tell the story behind the first Black Barbie, because yes, she has a story too. It started with the filmmaker’s 83-year-old aunt, Beulah Mae Mitchell, and a seemingly simple question, “Why not make a Barbie that looks like me?"
Through intimate access to a charismatic Mattel insider, Beulah Mae Mitchell, Black Barbie delves into the cross section of merchandise and representation as Black women struggle to elevate their own voices and stories, refusing to be invisible.
This film is a personal exploration that will tell a richly archival, thought-provoking story that gives voice to the insights and experiences of Beulah Mae Mitchell, the aunt of the Los Angeles-based filmmaker, who spent 45-years working at Mattel.
Upon Mattel’s 1980 release of Black Barbie, the film turns to the intergenerational impact the doll had. Discussing how the absence of black images in the “social mirror” left Black girls with little other than White subjects for self-reflection and self-projection. Beulah Mae Mitchell and other Black women in the film talk about their own, complex, varied experience of not seeing themselves represented, and how Black Barbie’s transformative arrival affected them personally.
BLACK BARBIE: A DOCUMENTARY is part of a broader movement to increase understanding of the importance of representation for Black women. As is too often overlooked, because they belong to two minority groups, Black Women tend to fall through the cracks in arguments and studies about representation. To address this issue, we ask that Black female cultural producers like the filmmaker, shape narratives that speak to Black women and girls’ reality, experience, and vision.
LAGUERIA DAVIS, Director
Originally from Fort Worth, Texas, Lagueria Davis grew up in a household where her dreams had to be practical, which is how she found herself at the University of Oklahoma double majoring in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Three years and three internships later, her need to create consumed her, and she left the engineering program and landed in the School of Art. After graduating with a BFA in Media Art, she worked in production until landing a Writers PA position on season two of The L Word: Generation Q. After wrapping The L Word, she was selected to participate in the Mentorship Matters Program. She was also hired as the Director's Shadow on Season three of The L Word: Generation Q, where she shadowed all ten episodes and five directors. Lagueria has several feature specs and four original pilots under her belt, was a 2016 Academy Nicholl Quarterfinalist, and is a four-time Austin Film Festival Second Rounder. Currently, she’s gearing up for the premier of her first, feature documentary about the first Black Barbie at the 2023 SXSW film festival. As a queer, INFJ aquarian, born in the year of the horse, she is as unique as her name.