Yvonne Welbon

Yvonne Welbon is an American independent film director, producer, and screenwriter based in Chicago. She is known for her films, Living with Pride:Ruth C. Ellis @ 100 (1999), Sisters in Cinema (2003), and Monique (1992).

Welbon attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for the MFA program in film and video and Northwestern University for a Ph.D, in Radio, TV, and Film.

Welbon has directed nine films and produced fifteen others. Her work has been screened on PBS, Starz/Encore, TV-ONE, IFC, Bravo, BET, the Sundance Channel and in the Toronto International Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, the Berlin Film Festival, and over one hundred other film festivals around the world. Living with Pride:Ruth C. Ellis @ 100 won ten best documentary awards, including the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Documentary. Her ongoing Sundance Documentary Fellowship project is Sisters in Cinema, a documentary, website, and forthcoming book based on her doctoral dissertation about the history of African American women feature film directors and the personal struggles they face within the industry based on their identities.^[1]

She is also working on a web based online community project, Sisters in the Life: 25 Years of Out African American Lesbian Media-making (1986-2011), which includes a collection of essays, a documentary, an archive, and a mobile app.^[2]

Welbon's producer credits include: John Pierson's Split Screen, Zeinabu Irene Davis' Mother of the River and her Sundance dramatic competition feature Compensation,^[3] Cheryl Dunye's HBO film Stranger Inside,^[4] Thomas Allen Harris' Berlin International Film Festival award-winning documentary É Minha Cara (That's My Face),^[5] Liz Miller's The Water Front, Alex Juhasz's Scale, Andrew Nisker's GERBAGE! The Revolution Starts at Home, and Catherine Crouch's One Small Step and Stray Dogs.^[6]

Having grown up as the daughter of a Chicago police officer, Welbon received an undergraduate degree in history from Vassar College. Thereafter, she spent six years in Taipei, Taiwan, where she taught English, learned Mandarin Chinese at the age of 23, and founded and published an alternative arts magazine.^[7] She ran the magazine for a total of five years.^[8]

After her return to the United States, Welbon completed a Masters of Fine Arts degree with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and later received her PhD from Northwestern University in 2001. She also graduated from the American Film Institute's, Directing Workshop for Women.^[8]

Welbon is associate professor and department chair of the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Bennett College for Women, an HBCU in Greensboro, North Carolina. Welbon has also been a visiting scholar at Duke University (2013-2014), and is working on a project to curate her "Sisters in Cinema" archive to allow it to become a resource for academic use.

Currently Welbon is the Interim Creative Director of Chicken and Egg Pictures and has produced a documentary, The New Black, by Yoruba Richen.^[9] She also has begun a web based community called Sisters in the Life: 25 Years of Out African American Lesbian Media-making (1986-2011).^[2]

• Monique (film) (1992)
• The Cinematic Jazz of Julie Dash (1992)
• Sisters in the Life: First Love (1993)
• Missing Relations (1994)
• Remembering Wei-Yi Fang, Remembering Myself (1996)
• Split Screen (TV series, 1997)
• Living with Pride: Ruth C. Ellis @ 100 (1999)
• The Taste of Dirt (2003)
• Sisters in Cinema (2003)

• Monique (1992)
• Mother of the River (short, associate producer, 1995)
• Remembering Wei-Yi Fang, Remembering Myself (1996)
• Compensation (associate producer, 1999)
• One Small Step (1999)
• Living with Pride: Ruth C. Ellis @ 100 (1999)
• Stranger Inside (TV Movie, associate producer, 2001)
• That's My Face (co-producer, 2001)
• Stray Dogs (2002)
• Sisters in Cinema (2003)
• The Water Front (2007)
• Scale: Measuring Might in the Media Age (2007)
• Garbage! The Revolution Starts at Home (2007)
• The New Black (2013)

• List of female film and television directors
• List of lesbian filmmakers
• List of LGBT-related films directed by women

• Ehrenstein, David. Sisters with Cameras. The Advocate, February 17, 2004.
• Lindsey, Craig D. 'Sisters' gives Fascinating Insight. The News & Observer, February 6, 2004.
• Moss, Marilyn. Sisters in Cinema. The Hollywood Reporter, February 6, 2004.
• Sumner, Jane. Filmmaker finds 'Sisters' in cinema but not Hollywood, Dallas Morning News, February 6, 2004.
• Bianco, Robert. Critics Corner- What to Watch This Weekend. USA Today. February 5, 2004.
• Mertes, Cara. Yvonne Welbon: The Indies' Own Self-Help Guru, The Independent, March 2003 Koehler, Robert. Sisters in Cinema. Variety. March 11, 2003.
• Merk, Ron. Be Your Own Distributor: If You Want Something Done Right..., Release Print, April 2002
• "The Innovators – Featuring 117 Gay and Lesbian Trend-Breakers: Yvonne Welbon" The Advocate. August 14, 2001
• Juhasz, Alexandra – Yvonne Welbon. Women of Vision: Histories in Feminist Film and Video Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
• "She Said Cinema: Yvonne Welbon," broadcast on the Sundance Channel, April 2001
• Stein, Rob. "Living With Pride," In The Life, #904, broadcast on PBS, April/May 2000
• Raab, Barbara. "The Book of Ruth," The Advocate, April 11, 2000
• Graham, Renee. "Life in the Pop Lane: Inspiring 'Pride' Depicts Life of Oldest Black Lesbian," The Boston Globe, April 11, 2000
• Wisco, Albert. "Yvonne Welbon at the Toronto Film Festival." Studio2, TV Ontario, broadcast November 12, 1999
• Willis, Holly. "Fifty Creatives to Watch." Variety, August 23–29, 1999
• Shen, Ted. "Film Explores Pride, Prejudice of a Lifestyle." The Chicago Tribune, August 26, 1999
• Willis, Holly. "Twenty-Five New Faces of Indie Film." Filmmaker, Summer 1998
• Redding, Judith M. and Victoria A. Brownworth "Yvonne Welbon: Memory." Film Fatales: Independent Women Directors, Seattle, WA: Seal Press, 1997, pp. 112–116.
• Walker, Cary. "Rethinking the Past: Learning to Question Mainstream Perceptions" Focus, Vol. XVII, 1997, pp. 13–22.
• Carter, Tammy."Soul Searching in the Far East." Times-Picayune, (New Orleans) July 28, 1996.
• Mura, David. "Alternative Gazes." New Observer, (Philadelphia, PA), July 17, 1996.
• Scott, Tony. "P.O.V. Remembering Wei Yi-fang..." Variety, July 29, 1996,
• Shen, Ted. "Reel Life: The Kindness of Strangers," The Reader, February 2, 1996.
• Miller, Cheryl. "In The Life: New Works by Black Lesbian Filmmakers." Hot Wire Vol 8, No. 3, September 1992.

• Official website
• Yvonne Welbon at IMDb
• Yvonne Welbon at Chicken & Egg Pictures