Guest Post: B. Good on the Corner by Tamika Guishard

A first-generation American, born of Caribbean (St. Kitts-Nevis) heritage in 1980’s East New York, Brooklyn, my ultimate goal as a filmmaker is to foster a re-birth of the after-school special for today’s urban youth. I aim to incite critical dialog within communities and between generations.

My first foray into film/video, “Hip-Hop Gurlz” (2003) completed the winter after graduating with a double major in Communications & Afro-American Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, was a video diary exploring the link between today’s hip-hop music videos and adolescent girls’ self-esteem. Although HHG was screened at scholarly conferences and youth symposiums nationwide, it was my return to East New York as “Ms. Guishard,” a seventh grade Social Studies teacher that cemented my desire to make films that entertain, enlighten, and teach.

(Three years and an Education degree later) at NYU’s Graduate Film program I learned how to recycle my teaching capacity into lasting stories for the screen: to live on through word-of-mouth, in classrooms and, eventually, theaters.  My film school objectives were pointed in that I matriculated to master the craft of writing and directing Film/TV, which I have learned is a powerful means to the end of improving the state of our union.
In order to break ground by lifting “edutainment” from its cookie-cutter mold and reshaping it into a viable, marketable, contemporary form of mass media, I felt that film school, particularly NYU, was the only starting point.  I founded B. Good Productions, a holistic media organization with storytelling at its foundation and education as its core, in my first year of film school under these auspices.

Film/TV is the only medium that can encompass all of who I am—dancer, educator, civil servant, Park Ranger—where I can wholly share my unique POV.  As a thesis film student I continue to weave civic responsibility and education into my projects by any means necessary, as exhibited in my 2007 documentary “Roundtable #1.”

The shooting death of Sean Bell in Jamaica, Queens by NYPD caused a number of hot-button issues surrounding urban communities to surface amongst my peers. Flummoxed about how to get us to put aside our opinions and get to the root of community development, I (with the help of friends) shot a think-tank and its planning stages.  Ultimately “Roundtable #1” is where NYC black & Brown Urban Professionals laid to rest their judgments about the causes of community dysfunction to unearth that Education, Ownership and Unification are the three biggest hurdles for our community today.

In “Hip-Hop Gurlz” & “Roundtable #1,” by sharing my thought process, I sought to show youth that it is fine to “think it out.”  My goal was to demonstrate that critical thinking is not a weakness, but a strength.

I am honored to kick off today’s “Chillin’ on da Corner’s” very special film series and health fair in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.  As a firm believer that storytelling, in its various forms, will engender mental as well as physical health, I do not make art for “art’s sake.” In the crucial times that we live in, I’ll use whatever I can – narrative drama, comedy, documentary – to make films that help.

Storytelling is an unmatched art whether in the classroom, a Ranger hat, on-stage, on-screen or on “the corner.” However, directing particularly fascinates me because of its “x-factor.”  Given a two-dimensional palette, I have no boundaries (visual, intellectual, spiritual) as to how to communicate the world of my story–that third dimension.

“Holistic media” is my way of using ALL of the communicative tools that I’ve been afforded, and am still learning, to brand a body of work whose “whole is more than the sum of its parts,” for anyone to see.

I am excited to direct my next short, an NYU Graduate Thesis film entitled JACKIE, while its overtones and subtext are virtually interchangeable.  It will challenge me to clearly relay each character’s want while sufficiently clouding her mind.  And also to convey this idea of traditionally masculine sparring taking place within a very charged, womanly world.

An uncharted probe into epidemics such as teen pregnancy, sacrifice and elitism, JACKIE is a taste of what’s to come.  This story of survival and sacrifice should be told irrespective of its medium.  I feel privileged to be able to tell it on film and am currently fundraising toward this end.

Although this all makes complete sense to me, I hope that you now see why this Park Ranger, dancer, teacher has chosen film and television.  (Was there really any other option?)

Tagged as: hip-hop gurlx, NYU graduate film school