S. Pearl Sharpe

S. Pearl Sharp has focused her work for six decades on cultural arts, Black Diaspora

history and wellness. Her films include The Healing Passage/ Voices From The

Water (2004) which aired on The Documentary Channel, Life Is A Saxophone on

poet-griot Kamau Daáood, poetry on film in Back Inside Herself and Channeled, the

health video It’s OK To Peek with Arabella Chavers Julien and the semi-animated

short Picking Tribes, with art by Carlos Spivey, now archived in the Women Make

Movies collection of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Working

with Exec. Producer Rosie Lee Hooks she wrote and directed a dozen cultural arts

docs for the City of Los Angeles’ Channel 35, including Central Avenue Live!

Sharp’s published writing includes four volumes of poetry, the documentary comic

book Black Women For Beginners, and her essays and commentaries broadcast on

NPR and Pacifica Radio are collected in The Evening News. She has released two

poetry w/jazz CDs and an audio collection of original short stories. Still instigating

through art new work includes the one-act play Give Me Liberty and a documentary

poetry video Blood Bank.

A cultural activist, she published the 1980 Directory of Black Film-TV Artists and

Technicians, West Coast to push Hollywood to employ more Blacks on crews, was a

co-founder of the Black Anti- Defamation Coalition {“the BAD C”}which monitored

the image of Blacks in the media, and is a founding member of BAD West.