We’ve had amazing shoots the past few months, interviewing women across the country who are trailblazers in their fields. Our series creator, director and producer, Charlotte Mangin, spoke with them about their paths to their careers, the challenges they’ve faced, and the women we’re featuring in our series who helped pave the way for their own work.

This includes interviews with opera singers J’Nai Bridges, Mezzo-Soprano who recently made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Queen Nefertiti in Philip Glass’s Akhnaten. J’Nai spoke openly about her path to opera, and the pioneering opera singer Sissieretta Jones, who we will be featuring in our series, the first African American woman to perform in Carnegie Hall.

“The first time I walked onto the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, I think my heart skipped a beat, maybe three. Opera is for everybody- it really is. It’s art.” We’re looking forward to sharing the stories of these two inspiring women and the art of opera in our series in 2020.

We also had a very thought provoking interview with journalist Amy Holmes, who has appeared as a political commentator on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR on more, who spoke about her own career, and about Charlotta Spears Bass, one of the first African American women to own and operate a newspaper in the United States. Bass published the California Eagle in Los Angeles from 1912 until 1951, and boldly addressed racism and racial violence, including the Ku Klux Klan, and LA’s discriminatory hiring practices and police brutality. Holmes spoke beautifully about Bass’ courage and the legacy of Bass’ work, and the impact of journalism:

“She saw that civil rights were everyone’s rights, that the black cause was the human cause. And she put that in her newspaper pages and she put it into action and she put it into life.” – Amy Holmes

Look out for these short films- on Sissieretta Jones and Charlotta Bass- in 2020!