Colin Powell School
Marrying Film and Activism: Savannah Washington on Her Path as a Film Director and the Making of “Playing Frisbee in North Korea”
After growing up in Detroit, Savannah Washington came to New York to combine her love of film, creative writing, and theater with her love of social activism. She became a Colin Powell Graduate Fellow in 2010 and learned about the conflict and human rights conditions on the Korean Peninsula. With close mentorship and financial support from the Colin Powell Center, Washington traveled to Korea and produced a cinema verite documentary film titled "Playing Frisbee in North Korea.” Originally intended as a short film to raise funds for the World Food Program in North Korea, the film became a full-length feature documentary and has influenced audiences at film festivals around the world. Watch the film’s trailer.
Please share with us a little of your story and background.
I was born in Detroit. After graduating from Michigan State University with a degree in communications and creative writing, I began teaching business subjects in post-secondary schools. In the late 1980s I moved to Los Angeles, California where I started a bookkeeping service for boutique talent agencies.
In the 1990s I left Los Angeles and became an Associate Professor at San Diego Community College District from 1998-2005, where I taught technology. I had acted in high school, college, and community theater and had done quite a bit of creative writing and wanted to return to my first love, writing and theater, so I began taking film production classes, which married my love of writing with production and directing. Later I came to New York after being accepted in the New York University production certificate program.
What brought you to City College?
I wanted to pursue a Master’s Degree in Film & Video. I was looking for a good M.F.A. program to further my education and solidify my career path in film. After researching schools, City College topped the list. It was a film program that was well-rated and also affordable. I didn’t want to graduate $150,000 in debt but wanted to be in a solid program. That turned out to be City College.
What passion or purpose drives your work?
Using my filmmaking work for activism had always been something that I wanted to do but didn’t know how to do effectively. I had done some community activism when I lived in San Diego, but wanted to devote more of my life to using my work for activism to affect public policy. In my first year in graduate school, I saw the posting for the Colin Powell Center fellowships that would help teach us public policy and how to advocate to affect change. That posting changed my life.
How has your career unfolded, and how has the Colin Powell School helped you along the way?
In 2010 I was the first film major to become a Colin Powell graduate fellow. Vince Boudreau, then a professor, was my mentor. As a fellow I attended the Korea Peninsula Reunification Conference that General Powell and the Powell Center convened, and I learned about the conditions the North Korean people were experiencing: famine, malnutrition, and human rights violations. At the time, the World Food Program was seeking money for food aid to North Korea for lactating mothers and children under two, without much success internationally. I asked if a short film on the issue would help raise awareness, and they said yes. Vince supported the idea from the beginning and later granted the film $25,000 in seed money from a grant given to the Center by a friend of General Powell. That allowed me to travel to the Korean peninsula and film verite footage from inside N. Korea, as well as interviews with North Korean refugees, aid workers, scholars, and experts on the topic. The documentary provides an authentic, on-the- ground perspective of the lives, struggles, and humanity of the people of North Korea.
What started as a short film became a feature length film (86 minutes) entitled Playing Frisbee in North Korea (www.AardvarkAlleyFilms.com), which has been picked up for distribution by American Public Television World Wide and Kino Lorber Educational and has been in film festivals all over the world. Without the support of the Colin Powell School and my fellowship there, this film would have never happened!
Since then my time at City College has come full circle. I am currently a full adjunct professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College. I also teach production classes and an activism class that I developed at The New School.