In ESPN’s short film Black Girls Play (which won Best Short Doc at the Tribeca Festival), filmmakers Michèle Stephenson and Joe Brewster chronicle the origins of the hand games that young Black girls have played for generations, and their influence on music, dance, and community all across the American creative landscape. Tracing the beginnings of the games all the way back to the slavery era, the film’s collection of illuminating voices — including musicians, music educators and ethnomusicologists — trace a fascinating cultural history that explains the significance of hand games, particularly in the evolution of popular music from jazz all the way to hip hop. The film also explores hand games’ influence on style and individualism everywhere from the playground to TikTok videos today.

Filmmaker, artist and author, Michèle Stephenson, pulls from her Haitian and Panamanian roots and experience as a social justice lawyer to think radically about storytelling and disrupt the imaginary in non-fiction spaces. She tells emotionally driven, personal narratives of resistance and identity that center the lived experiences of communities of color in the Americas and the Black diaspora.

In 2023, Michèle’s feature documentary Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and premiered on MAX. Previously, her feature documentary American Promise was nominated for three Emmys and won the Jury Prize at Sundance. Along with her writing partners, Joe Brewster and Hilary Beard, Michèle won an NAACP Image Award for Excellence in a Literary Work for their book, Promises Kept. Currently, she is in post-production on a feature on the death of Freddie Gray and a program for the CBC on the Black Power movement in Canada.