Michèle Stephenson

Academic Year 2026-2027
Black Film Project Fellow
Michèle Stephenson in front of a pink background, looking at the photographer

Emmy, Guggenheim, and Sundance Award-winning filmmakers Michèle Stephenson and her partner, Joe Brewster, co-founded Rada Studio, creating fiction films, creative non-fiction works, XR installations, and books. Through a Black Atlantic lens, they explore resistance, healing, and Black diasporic experiences. Their works include Black Girls Play: The Story of Hand Games (NAACP Award winner: Short Form Documentary; Oscars shortlist), Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project (Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking; Sundance Grand Jury Prize and Oscars shortlist), and True North (FOCAL International Award for Best Use of Footage in a History Feature; Toronto Internationals Film Festival Official Selection). Stephenson and Brewster are currently working on the hybrid film, Untitled Paul Robeson Film, on the life and legacy of Paul Robeson.

ODE TO PAUL

Michèle Stephenson’s and her partner’s fellowship project is ODE TO PAUL. It reclaims the life and legacy of Paul Robeson in a genre-defying documentary, rejecting conventional biography in favor of an immersive and complex character study. Drawing from Robeson’s estate archive, the film treats his legacy as a living world of inquiry. Time and space collapse through hybrid staged tableaux that use his own words, allowing Paul’s voice to guide the rhythm of the film and reveal his internal reckoning shaped by his lived experiences, artistry, activism, and courage. The narrative is shaped by moments of adversity that illuminate Robeson’s tenacity. These experiences reveal the collision of artistic and political life, drawing audiences into Robeson’s decisions under pressure. Robeson’s performances from Ol’ Man River to Othello become a doorway into his political evolution. The film delivers a kaleidoscopic portrait of a powerful international artist and activist who refused neutrality, creating an intergenerational conversation on censorship, resistance, and integrity that resonates today