Girls and women from across the country with aspirations of working in film competed this weekend at Syracuse University’s Newhouse 3 as part of the Black Girls Don’t Get Love film training program.
The participants competed in various tracks — screenwriting, acting, and production.
Thirteen girls and women, seven from Syracuse, competed as part of the weekend-long program that teaches Black women about the film industry.
Celeste Hills, 10, of Syracuse, was one of the youngest participants. She dreams of being an actress.
“At first it was a way to get something to do over the summer. But then as I started getting into it. It was a way for me to experience what it’s like in the real world as an actor,” Hills said. “What I wanted to get [from] Black Girls Don’t Get Love was those real-life experiences that can help me in the real world.”
This year’s iteration of the program marked its second cohort. Over the last two years, Black Girls Don’t Get Love has drawn 35 girls and women to Syracuse. They came from Alabama, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
The program focuses on celebrating the participants’ identities and experiences as young girls and women. Participants use the book Black Girls Don’t Get Love written by Eden Strachan, the program’s creator, to write scripts or produce scenes featuring their cohort members.
While in the program, students explore a range of programs and activities: primarily film training, screenwriting and acting. This year’s program ran from July 11 to 14.
In the program, the women picked acting, screenwriting, or production as a track to follow. At the competition inside Newhouse, the participants presented scripts, and short films or read a monologue to a panel of judges. The winners had their pitches purchased by Black Girls Don’t Get Love.
Three contestants were selected from each track and awarded $100.
The program allows them to see a pathway to the film industry regardless of their prior experience, Hills said.
“We’re trying to bridge that gap and have people not feel like that don’t have to go to Los Angeles or New York for exposure,” Strachan said.
Hills participated in the acting track and presented an audition tape. She acted out Dory’s “When I look at you, I’m home” scene from the movie Finding Nemo. After the scene concluded, the room applauded for Hills.
Through the program Hills gained valuable skills in screenwriting, producing, acting, and learning to operate on-set camera equipment, she said.
“What I’ve learned after the program is you can do all of them, you can be whatever you want to,” Hills said.
Other cohort members like Cyreema Marshall, 21, of New Jersey, and Zaniah Lampkin, 15, of Endicott, New York, traveled from outside of Syracuse to participate in the program.
Marshall found out about the program on Instagram. She applied and joined the screenwriting track. Her goal is to become a writer and a coordinator of an international film festival.
Lampkin participated in the acting track. She learned about the program through her school, Union-Endicott High School. Lampkin aspires to be a broadcast journalist and has been inspired by Gayle King, she said.
She enjoyed the hands-on experience from the program and connecting with her other cohort members, she said.
Strachan created the program because of her experiences as a young girl growing up in Syracuse. She struggled with her sense of identity and self-love, she said.
Strachan vividly remembers jokes from elementary school classmates made about her skin color and hair.
Now at 25, Strachan has used those experiences to tell stories and increase the representation of Black women in the film industry while encouraging other young girls and women of color to do the same.
“Thinking about just my own story and what I wanted to do in terms of merging my passions and interests of media and social impact,” Strachan said. “Black Girls Don’t Get Love was my call to action and coming-of-age story.”
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