Américan filmmaker and scholar.

Sometimes credited as
Zeinabu Irene DAVIS

Zeinabu irene Davis is an independent filmmaker and Professor of Communication at University of California, San Diego. Her work is passionately concerned with the depiction of women of African descent. Ms. Davis works in narrative, documentary and experimental genres. A selection of her award winning works includes a drama about a young slave girl for both children and adults, Mother of the River. MOR was funded by ITVS and enjoyed a 4 year run on 76 Public Broadcasting stations and won top awards at four children's film festivals. She has also completed an award winning love story set in Afro-Ohio, A Powerful Thang and an experimental narrative exploring the psycho- spiritual journey of a woman with Cycles. Her dramatic feature film entitled Compensation features two inter-related love stories that offer a view of Black Deaf culture. Compensation had a two-year broadcast run on the Sundance and BlackStarz! Cable Channels. The film was selected for the dramatic competition at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival, and was the winner of the Gordon Parks Award for Directing from the Independent Feature Project in 1999.

In 2005, Davis released a documentary Trumpetistically Clora Bryant that was funded by the National Black Programming Consortium and was featured at the Pan African and Hollywood Black Film Festivals. She has recently released two documentaries, Co- Motion: Stories of Breastfeeding Women and Momentum: A Conversation with Black Women on Achieving Grad Degrees. Third World Newsreel and Women Make Movies in New York distribute her films.

Zeinabu irene Davis holds an undergraduate degree from Brown University, a MA in African Studies and an MFA from UCLA. She frequently writes articles on African American cinema, which have been published in Afterimage, Black Film Review, Cineaste, Wide Angle and Hot Wire. She has also served as a panelist for the Independent Television Service, the Illinois and Ohio Arts Councils and on the editorial committee for the POV series on PBS. She has received fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Illinois and Ohio Arts Councils, the American Film Institute and the National Endowment for the Arts. She currently is a full Professor in the Department of Communication at University of California, San Diego.

Source:
https://spiritsofrebellion.com/about/