The Rebel Girls (2024) with filmmaker Felicia D Henderson & Cast

Post-screening conversation with filmmaker writer/director Felicia D Henderson and THE REBEL GIRLS cast members. Following the event, there will be a reception in the Block Museum's lobby.
Sponsored by the Medill School of Journalism with support from the Department of Black Studies and Black Screens Club at Northwestern University.
About the film:

In the summer of 1963, approximately 200 children, some as young as 10 years old, were arrested for protesting at the segregated Martin Theater in Americus, GA. More than 15 girls "disappeared." Never charged with a crime, they sat in a Civil War-era stockade for nearly 60 days without their families being informed of their whereabouts. The goal was to break their spirits and punish them for fighting for their rights. Their captors did not anticipate their courage, faith, and resolve.

Through the gift of magical thinking, girl-warriors were able to disappear into a world of fantasy to preserve their spirits and fight another day. Inspired by true events, THE REBEL GIRLS is about the strength of sisterhood, the resilience of family, and the power of love.
About the filmmaker:

FELICIA D HENDERSON is the creator of Showtime’s Emmy Award-nominated, and three-time NAACP Image Award Best Drama winner, Soul Food, television’s first successful African American one-hour drama.

Currently, Felicia is developing a television drama for Twentieth TV, and recently wrote, directed and produced her first short film, THE REBEL GIRLS. Inspired by the true story of a group of girl warriors who were arrested and imprisoned for attempting to integrate a movie theater in 1963 Southern Georgia. They survived through their sisterhood, magical thinking, and humor.

THE REBEL GIRLS represents the first time their story has been told and marks Felicia’s film directing debut. For her efforts, she was named the 2024 Diversity in Cannes Global Legacy Award winner. THE REBEL GIRLS won the 2024 Jury Prize at the Cinequest Film and Creativity Festival in Silicon Valley, a Special Jury Prize at the Orlando International Film Festival and was one of five films finalists chosen to participate in the HBO Shorts/ABFF Showcase.

The film also took home the Best Short Film award at Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival and the Best Narrative Short and Best of the Festival awards at BronzeLens Film Festival, qualifying in the Live Action Short Film Oscar Award category. THE REBEL GIRLS also won the Greater Cleveland Urban Film Festival’s Best Short Film award and was nominated for a 2024 Humanitas Award in the same category.

A lover of stories set in supernatural and magical worlds, Felicia was the showrunner and head writer on the Netflix vampire drama, First K*ll. She co-created and executive produced The Quad, a one-hour drama set on the campus of a fictional HBCU, co-executive produced Marvel’s The Punisher, and Fox’s Empire. The accomplished writer of high-drama and broad comedy has also written and produced high-profile shows such as Gossip Girl, Fringe, and Everybody Hates Chris.

Felicia is an associate professor in the Department of Radio, Television, and Film at Northwestern University where she is committed to race, thought, and gender equality. She is a media studies scholar and earned an MFA and is a PhD candidate at UCLA. Her research interests include class, race, and gender issues in television writers’ rooms, the political economics of the 2007-2008 WGA strike, and the othering of single women in the media.

In 2023, she contributed chapters to Beretta E. Smith-Shomade’s Watching While Black Rebooted! The Television and Digitality of Black Audiences. In 2024, she wrote an essay for Alfred L. Martin, Jr.’s collection of critical thought on race and identity, Rolling: Blackness and Mediate Comedy. Felicia’s critical essays have also been in the Cinema Journal, Popular Communication, Media/Culture Studies: Critical Approaches, Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries, and Emergences.

A past NBC/Peabody fellow with an MBA in corporate finance and non-profit management, Felicia has been honored with UCLA’s Tom Bradley Alumnus of the Year award and the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television’s Alumni Achievement Award.

Felicia is committed to mentoring and providing arts and education opportunities to underserved teens and emerging writers from underserved communities. She also supports survivors of domestic violence through pro bono writing workshops at support sites of the Jenesse Center. the advisory board of Shero’s Rise, which provides self-esteem, leadership, and college prep services to girls from underserved communities.

At UCLA, she endowed the Felicia D Henderson Screenwriting Scholarship in the Department of Film, TV, and Digital Media; and along with sister-colleagues Sara Finney-Johnson, Mara Brock Akil, and Gina Prince-Bythewood, she endowed the Four Sisters Fellowship in Screenwriting, Directing, and Animation for filmmakers committed to telling stories about the Black experience. Felicia is also a proud Diamond Life member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., a community service and social action organization of college-educated women.

Although she owes her warrior spirit and kitchen mastery of cornbread dressing, candied yams, and banana pudding to her mother’s Mississippi roots, Felicia was born and raised in Pasadena, CA. She splits her time between Los Angeles, Chicago, and wherever film and television production takes her.

Host or Publisher The Block Museum of Art