Rada Collaborative
Our Mission
The Rada Collaborative is an arts organization based between Brooklyn and Baltimore that uses cinema, visual art, and compelling visual stories to build narrative agency and material change for creators of color. We provoke critical thought and disrupt the status quo in nonfiction spaces and our world. We formed Rada Collaborative as a space to nurture and mentor BIPOC artists and provide a platform to spotlight their work and build an expansive sense of belonging for them.
We are building a community of creatives who redefine the cinematic canon. We question and challenge established theories and approaches that center the idea that diverse representation in storytelling power structures alone is not a sufficient or adequate measure for justice and structural change. Instead, we prioritize a complex deep examination of character and story motivation and agency within storytelling and artistic practices.
Projects
Age of Water
In Mexico’s heartland, a close-knit community is torn apart when three children die due to a rare form of cancer. A group of mothers determined to uncover the cause, unexpectedly expose radioactivity in their water supply, setting the stage for a battle against local authorities who repeatedly undercut their efforts. Their journey reveals the dangers that lie in Mexico’s ancient layers of water and the terrifying effects that occur when rural communities battle government-backed interests.
Cuscú
Black Panamanian filmmaker, Risseth Yanguez-Singh asks her grandmother a question about their shared kinky hair texture. The painful conversation that ensues takes Risseth on a journey of self-discovery where she finds other Black women and places that teach her to navigate and enjoy the complexities of identity, self-love and Panama’s hidden Black history.
The Banker’s Daughter
Years after its collapse devastated her family, filmmaker Samia Khan-Bambrah takes us on an intimate journey into the collapse of the Bank of the Credit and Commerce International, unearthing the trail of stolen dreams left in its place in the forgotten corners of the Developing World.
Marpessa Dawn Untitled
The devastating racial and health crises of 2020 inspire filmmaker Soraya Sélène to travel across the world grappling with her six-year-old twin’s reckoning with race and identity. In the process, she learns that to make her children whole, she must unpack her own childhood and relationship with her Black mother. Piecing together the legacy of her enigmatic and absent mother, Marpessa Dawn, star of the cult classic all-Black-cast film, Black Orpheus (1959), Soraya faces the shattered fragments of memories she long thought were lost.