Producer
Femi Folami-Browne
A Miami native born in the 1950’s, Femi Folami Browne knows well this documentary’s underlying theme. She has long spoken out against racial disparity beginning in her teens when she rebelled against the status quo by joining the Theatre of Afro Arts, Miami’s first black cultural arts organization. She performed her ‘poetry of protest’ in city schools and on university campuses. At age 17, while a student at Miami Dade Community College she was one of the opening acts for the late civil rights activist, Dick Gregory, and performed onstage with the legendary spoken word artists “The Last Poets”. Her first play, ‘A Play for Zubena’, about a black woman poet who commits suicide, was listed in Black World Magazine, a Johnson Publication and, she was then considered and ‘up and coming writer’ but harbored dreams of making films. She received an Associates Degree in Radio, Television Technology and her undergraduate degree in Communications. Her aspirations of producing films went into hibernation when she married a young pilot and moved to Lagos, Nigeria where instead, she travelled the world and became mother to three daughters. Options for women film producers in Nigeria in the 70’s to be taken seriously in cinematic arts were few. ‘Nollywood’, had not yet come of age.
Ironically, Browne and her daughters happened to be visiting her mother in 1980 Miami when the McDuffie Riots erupted. Upon learning details of the case, she too felt the outrage and witnessed the carnage that ensued. During that civil disturbance she volunteered to work with Miami’s Center for Family and Child Enrichment, an organization that was deputized to go out after the governor’s imposed Marshal law and attempt to encourage youth in the community to stay off the streets during the curfew and avoid arrest . That singular event left her with the impression that very little in America had changed since her departure nearly a decade earlier during the Nixon administration. She would return with her daughters to live in Nigeria until she and her former husband bought a home in Miami in 1983.
Upon returning to America, Browne served as Telethon Director in South Florida for the United Negro College Fund and later worked for the U.S. House of Representatives as Community Liaison to former Congresswoman, Carrie P. Meek. It was as a result of her work with Meek that she wrote, directed and produced her first documentary film, ‘Economics and Aging-A Profile of Miami’s Black Elderly’ which premiered at the 103rd Congressional Black Caucus as part of their ‘ Aging Braintrust’ symposium.Browne, with children grown and gone, currently mentors young creatives and writes grants for cultural arts and community development organizations. More importantly, Browne seems to have found the perfect collaboration with filmmaker, Dudley Alexis and is ‘rewiring instead of retiring ‘ fully equipped at this stage of her life to make her earlier dreams of producing relevant films come to fruition.