Firelight Media is proud to present a special screening and conversation around TCB - The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing, on Monday, August 3, from 6:00 to 9:30 pm at The Forum at Columbia University as part of HARLEM WEEK/ImageNation Film Festival. This event is made possible by our partners at the MacArthur Foundation, West Harlem Development Corporation, ImageNation, and HARLEM WEEK and is part of our Beyond Resilience series.

RSVP TO ATTEND

This free event will feature a post-screening conversation with MacArthur Fellows Louis Massiah, co-director of the film, and Ruha Benjamin, award-winning writer and scholar, and Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. The conversation will be moderated by our President and CEO, Loira Limbal. 

TCB - The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing (2025, 105 minutes) is a biography of the influential writer, filmmaker, and cultural worker, who with humor and deep insight, inspired a generation of artists to dedicate themselves to community empowerment. The film is structured as a series of lessons on cultural organizing, gleaned from Bambara's life and shared by her friends, colleagues and students.

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This moment calls for creative courage. For 45 years, MacArthur Fellows have expanded the boundaries of possibility by questioning conventions, crossing disciplines, and driving collective progress.

Throughout 2026, the Foundation is celebrating the ground-breaking work of the Fellows and inspiring public dialogue through a series of nationwide events and conversations.

Learn more at macfound.org/fellows-45.

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Event Details:

Monday, August 3, 2026
HARLEM WEEK/ImageNation Film Festival
TCB: The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing, Special Screening & Conversation
6:00–9:30 PM
The Lee C. Bollinger Forum, Columbia University
601 W 125th Street
New York, NY 10027

Panelists:

Louis Massiah, MacArthur Fellow and Co-director, TCB: The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing
Ruha Benjamin, MacArthur Fellow and Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University

Moderator:

Loira Limbal, President & CEO, Firelight Media; Director, Through the Night

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Participant Bios:

Louis Massiah is a documentary filmmaker and the founder of the Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia. He has developed production methodologies that assist first-time makers author their own stories, including the Precious Places Community History Project, a collection of 150 documentaries; Muslim Voices of Philadelphia; The Great Migration - A City Transformed, and The Tenants of Lenapehocking in the Age of Magnets. Massiah’s documentaries include The Bombing of Osage Avenue, W.E.B. Du Bois – A Biography in Four Voices, Cecil B. Moore, two films for the Eyes on the Prize II series, A is for Anarchist, B is for Brown, and TCB – The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing.

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Ruha Benjamin is Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, and award-winning author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (2019), Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (2022), and Imagination: A Manifesto (2024). Professor Benjamin is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the American Council of Learned Societies, National Science Foundation, Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar Award, President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton, and 2024 MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellowship.

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Loira Limbal [she/her] is President & CEO of Firelight Media, a nonprofit organization that supports, resources, and advocates on behalf of documentary filmmakers of color. She is a multidisciplinary artist who works in documentary film and video installation and as a DJ. Her acclaimed film Through the Night (2020), a feature documentary about a 24-hour daycare center, was a New York Times Critics’ Pick, garnered a duPont-Columbia award, was selected for a World Premiere at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival, and aired on PBS' POV series. Her previous film, Estilo Hip Hop, a feature-length documentary that chronicles the lives of three hip hop activists from Brazil, Chile, and Cuba, aired on PBS in 2009. She is a member of the New Negress Film Society and serves on the boards of Movimiento Ananse and Ruta Crítica.

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About Harlem Week

‍HARLEM WEEK is a massive, annual summer festival in New York City that celebrates the rich culture, history, and community of the Greater Harlem area. What began in 1974 as a one-day block party to uplift the neighborhood has grown into a multi-week celebration featuring over 100 events. The festival's core goal is to preserve Harlem's cultural legacy while supporting Black businesses and job creation. It acts as a living archive of the people, institutions, and traditions that shaped the neighborhood.

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About ImageNation

‍Founded in 1997, ImageNation is a Harlem-based cultural organization dedicated to film, music, and community storytelling centered on the global Black experience. Programming includes ImageNation Outdoors, Cocktails & Sōl Cinema at the Apollo, and screenings and festivals presented at the Apollo Theater, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Lincoln Center, and cultural institutions throughout the United States and internationally. ImageNation has produced events for more than one million attendees worldwide and has featured artists and cultural leaders, including Spike Lee, Ava DuVernay, Lee Daniels, Stanley Nelson, Ruby Dee, Erykah Badu, Chuck D, Raoul Peck, and India.Arie. ImageNation is also a founding partner of ARRAY.