Grrrl Justice

A short narrative film, Grrrl Justice follows the stories of three characters - one being released from juvenile detention, another being exploited by a sex trafficker, and one navigating the school to prison pipeline.

A short narrative film, Grrrl Justice follows the stories of three characters – one being released from juvenile detention, another being exploited by a sex trafficker, and one navigating the school to prison pipeline. The film examines how traumatic backgrounds including family violence, racism, poverty, sexual abuse, homophobia and transphobia attach young people to systems that criminalize them, rather than alleviate the impacts of systemic oppression in their lives. It also takes an honest look at how these youth are employing their agency, body autonomy, and healthy resistance in pursuit of their own liberation.

Running time: 16:09

This discussion guide was developed to help deepen your use of the short narrative film Grrrl Justice.

GRRRL JUSTICE FILM LICENSE + DISCUSSION GUIDE

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As an artist, I’ve met so many incredible young people who have shared their stories of resilience and resistance with me. I’ve absorbed these stories into my creative practice and taken them with me into advocacy spaces and policy rooms. In many ways, they have reflected back to me some of my early experiences being a court involved young person. One of the things I recognize is that girls and queer youth of color have always used their agency to practice healthy resistance to structures that are meant to harm them, whether or not we characterize their behaviors as such. It is our responsibility as a community to shift our lenses from problematizing and criminalizing them, to supporting their efforts at liberation in all the ways we can. It is my hope that Grrrl Justice serves as a catalyst for these efforts.

– Shontina Vernon, Filmmaker

SHONTINA VERNON

WRITER/DIRECTOR/EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

Shontina Vernon is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and musician exploring Black subjectivities, intergenerational legacies around healing and trauma, and queerness. Drawing from her early experiences with the criminal justice system, her work experiments to disrupt narratives of erasure and to investigate the intersections of race, gender, and class. She earned her MFA from the University of Washington.

Vernon is a 2020 Art for Justice Grantee, a Creative Capital Award recipient, and a Conductive Garboil Award recipient for her community based work as Creative Director of the Visionary Justice StoryLab, a collective and film production hub evolving narratives rooted in liberation. Her plays and films have been developed and presented by HBO, New York Theatre Workshop, LaMaMa in collaboration with NEC, Northwest Film Forum, and ACT Theatre in Seattle among others. Vernon has served as an advisor and facilitator for the Arthouse Convergence working to advance racial justice in film.

Recent works include the plays WOMEN OF THE WILD ROOT and A LOVELY MALFUNCTION, as well as GRRRL Justice – an experimental short looking at the resistance and liberatory practices of girls and queer youth of color impacted by the juvenile justice system, and HER BLACK BODY POLITIC – a community devised spoken word and movement piece exploring the politics of the black female body and the way it occupies literal and poetic space. She is currently developing LAST KIND WORDS, a feature film on 1930s Black queer Blues life.

Vernon currently resides in Atlanta, GA.