Mama Gloria

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official selection

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“Fisher's debut documentary feature about Chicago legend Gloria Allen…is a love letter to the charismatic activist.”

Chicago Reader

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about

Meet Mama Gloria. Chicago’s Black transgender icon Gloria Allen, now in her 70s, blazed a trail for trans people like few others before her. Emerging from Chicago’s South Side drag ball culture in the 1960s, Gloria overcame traumatic violence to become a proud leader in her community. Most famously, she pioneered a charm school for young transgender people that served as inspiration for the hit play Charm. Luchina Fisher’s empathic and engaging documentary is not only a portrait of a groundbreaking legend, but also a celebration of unconditional love, the love Gloria received from her own mother and that she now gives to her chosen children. And it is driven by the love that Luchina has for her teenage transgender daughter, Gia.

Mama Gloria is a co-production of Little Light Productions and Black Public Media with major funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The Field Foundation of Illinois and WORLD. It has received additional support from Sisters in Cinema, SouthPaw Video Productions, the 2020 Athena Film Festival’s Works in Progress Program and Women Make Movies Production Assistance Program.

featuring the original song

presence of a legend

by shea diamond

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team

DIRECTOR/Writer/PRODUCER — Luchina Fisher

Luchina is an award-winning writer, director and producer whose work is at the intersection of race, gender and identity. Her feature directorial debut Mama Gloria premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival and BFI Flare London, won Best Film at CineOdyssey and Best Documentary at Teaneck International, and was broadcast on PBS and WORLD Channel in Spring 2021. Previously, Luchina co-executive produced and co-wrote the critically acclaimed feature documentary Birthright: A War Story, which appeared in more than 70 theaters nationwide, qualified for Oscar consideration and streamed on Hulu. She is the director of two short films, including Danger Word, and has written and produced several nationally broadcast documentaries as well as numerous segments for television. Luchina began her career as a journalist and has written for People, the Miami Herald, The New York Times, O, The Oprah Magazine and ABCNews.com. Luchina is a Sisters in Cinema Documentary Fellow and a member of Brown Girl Doc Mafia and the Black Documentary Collective.

Director of Photography — Stephen Lewis

Stephen is an Emmy Award-winning producer with more than two decades of experience in journalism and video production, and the co-producer of the feature documentary, Making Sweet Tea, chronicling the lives of gay Black men.

Editor — Caroline Berler

Caroline is a documentary editor based in New York City with over 10 years of experience working on non-fiction projects, including her debut feature film Dykes, Camera, Action!, which won the Emerging Talent Award at Outfest in 2018 and was a recipient of a Frameline completion grant.

Producer — Yvonne Welbon

Yvonne is Senior Creative Consultant at Chicken & Egg Pictures, an award-winning filmmaker, and founder of the Chicago-based non-profit Sisters in Cinema. She has produced over 20 films including LIVING WITH PRIDE: RUTH ELLIS @100—winner of ten best documentary awards. Her work has been screened on PBS, Starz, TV-ONE, Bravo, BET, HBO, Netflix, iTunes and in over 100 film festivals around the world. Raised in an Afro-Latinx Honduran household, Welbon received a B.A from Vassar College, a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, and is a graduate of the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women.

Producer — Zainab Ali

Zainab is a producer of independent film with a background as a senior recruiter. Her credits include: executive producer on Sugarcoated, line producer for the horror short Danger Word, and executive producer of Death In the Family.

PRODUCER — Lorna GrisbY

Lorna is an award-winning journalist, a former deputy bureau chief for People magazine and a morning, drive-time talk radio executive producer at WVON in Chicago. Currently, Lorna is writing a book about systemic racism in American criminal justice.

Composer — Jocelyn c Chambers

Jocelyn owes her musical genes to her grandfather, Robert O. Chambers, a self-taught jazz and Gospel pianist. Chambers began taking piano lessons at age 7 and studying composition at age 13. At 17, she enrolled in the music composition program at the University of Texas’s Butler School of Music, where she produced The Gospel According to Jocelyn, an original three-fold work of music, poetry and film in collaboration with the Cohen New Works Festival. Mama Gloria marks Chambers' debut original feature film composition, which she is writing while earning a film scoring certificate from UCLA.