FREE SCREENING – BAM BAM: The Sister Nancy Story + BUBBLING BABY

18 Mount Morris Park West, or use the Fifth Avenue and 124th Street entrance Friday, July 31st, 2026 at 7PM / SunsetMADE YOU LOOK: H20 (HIP-HOP ODYSSEY) Co-presented with Hip-Hop Education Center Alison Duke, June 2024, 98 minProducers: Alison Duke, Ngardy Conteh George Sister Nancy’s “Bam Bam” has been part of our collective consciousness for over 40 years, but what do we really know about her? This fun, inspirational documentary showcases Sister Nancy's resilience through dynamic tour performances, interviews, archival footage, and reenactments. In an industry notorious for silencing female artists, Sister Nancy is hell-bent on empowering others with her music and knowledge to make a difference—proving that good music can't be stopped! sister nancy’s “bam bam” ALISON DUKE – An award-winning writer - producer - director and passionate artistic activist committed to boldly telling stories of resistance and change. Recently, she co-wrote and co-produced the television documentary Mr. Jane and Finch directed by Ngardy Conteh George which garnered two 2020 Canadian Screen Awards: the Donald Britain Award for Best Social/Political Documentary and Best Writing for a Documentary. During the same timeframe, she directed Cool Black North, a two-hour television documentary special for CityTV/Rogers about the unique and vibrant Canadian Black Community and its role in our country’s contemporary identity. The movie goes about it through the POV of 15 former winners of the Harry Jerome Awards. The film was Roger’s top 10 streaming show in February 2019. Inspired by Ava Duvernay, #MeToo and the reality that opportunities for women behind the camera in Canada are long overdue, Alison hired five Black female Canadian directors to helm short films for the Akua Benjamin Legacy Project (16) which celebrates the legacies of Canadian-based black activists Dudley Laws, Charles Roach, Rosie Douglas, Marlene Green and Len and Gwen Johnson. Alison got her start directing and producing documentaries with the hip hop cult classic, Raisin’ Kane: a rapumentary. From there she worked as a segment producer and field director on syndicated factual and lifestyle shows. Eventually she made her way to social issue docs; A Deathly Silence. She also collaborations with other filmmakers as a producer; Andrew Nisker’s Garbage: The Revolution Stars at Home, Dany Chiasson’s My Joan of Arc and Thomas Allen Harris’s Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photography and the Emergence of a People, ….. She is now focusing more attention to fictional storytelling. Promise Me (2020) , her first short fiction inspired by the seminal HIV documentary The Woman I Have Become, is currently touring the festival circuit after winning the Winston W. Moxam award for Best Canadian short film at the 2020 AfroPrairie Film Festival. Alison has an MFA at York University in film production and is sought after lecturer. She founded OYA Emerging Filmmakers Program (formerly Black Youth! Pathway2Industry) , a 3-year initiative to support black youth who are graduates of film, television and digital media programs access essential training, mentors, networks and film industry spaces. PRECEDED BY: Sharine Rijsenburg, 2025, 19 mins. A short documentary by Sharine Rijsenburg exploring the rich history and cultural significance of bubbling music, a genre that originated in the 1980s within Caribbean-Dutch communities, particularly among Surinamese and Antillean youth in Rotterdam, The Hague, and Amsterdam. DJ Moortje, a Dutch-Caribbean DJ of Curaçaoan descent, is often credited as the pioneer of bubbling. In 1986, he accidentally played a dancehall record at an accelerated tempo in a Rotterdam club. Instead of stopping the track, the crowd responded enthusiastically, dancing in a new, quick, jerking style that became associated with bubbling. The high-energy sound was soon embraced by other DJs, who developed the style, blending dancehall, reggae, and Surinamese and Antillean rhythms. Making the sound even more unique, DJs started remixing Jamaican dancehall with electronic beats. More than just a music genre, bubbling evolved into a dance movement, resembling dancehall but faster and more expressive. Above all, bubbling became a way for Surinamese- and Caribbean-Dutch youth in the Netherlands to express their cultural identity in a new social environment. Bubbling Baby, which premiered at the 2025 International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) last February, delves into the genre's roots and its evolution into a vibrant club music and dance movement. Bubbling music is one of the most spirited manifestations of Caribbean-Dutch cultural heritage. The propulsive and highly danceable music symbolises freedom, power and ownership of the diaspora. This vibrant documentary celebrates bubbling’s storied history, tracing the historic and cultural roots of the club music, while exploring the contemporary scene that keeps pushing the envelope. By explicitly forefronting the female voices of bubbling, filmmaker Sharine Rijsenburg composes a joyful and feminist symphony of a musical scene that perfectly embodies an emancipated way of living. SHARINE RIJSENBURG – A creative researcher and visual anthropologist based in Rotterdam. She combines explorations of socio-political issues with engaging storytelling. Her work demonstrates her practice of delving into Dutch and Caribbean archives to investigate the relationship between (self) image, representation, and colonial history.