MacKenzie Galloway ‘23 has many titles—filmmaker, writer, fashion designer, Howard University doctorate student, and congressional staffer for Rep. Rashida Tlaib. On Oct. 11, Galloway hosted the Afrofuturist Femmes Film Festival to highlight films that fit into the Afrofuturism genre.

Afrofuturism, according to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, is a cultural aesthetic and expression that reclaims Black identity and agency through art that looks to the past, while envisioning a liberated future. In Galloway’s own words, a specific example comes to mind:

“The analogy I often use is: Harriet Tubman was looking to the stars and using the North Star and the Big Dipper to bring enslaved people to freedom, and then we had the first Black woman, Mae Jemison, go to space [about] 100 years later. She would be amongst those [same] stars. That’s Afrofuturism.” 

The Afrofuturist Femmes Film Festival was held in the Charles Sumner School—Galloway chose it as a venue because it was the first Black public school built in Washington, D.C., founded in 1972.

“There’s a lot of Black history … It was important to have [the festival] in a place that centered Blackness,” Galloway said.

Using film as a means for representation and education in the first Black school in the district is nothing short of poetic justice. Galloway knows the journey has not been an easy one, but just like the films she’s screening today, she wants to look forward:

“Unfortunately, a lot of Afrofuturist work hasn’t been platformed, and that’s what this festival is meant to do. I wanted to be able to give other filmmakers that opportunity, as a filmmaker myself,” she said. “It’s important for me to platform work that portrays Black people and people of the African Diaspora being normal people. Our stories are not one-fold.” 

The first film shown was “Opal,” directed by Alan Bidard, an animated film about a young girl with a great responsibility to her galaxy. Afrofuturism is about honoring the past while looking forward to the future, and “Opal” did exactly that through its costume design, scenic value, and score. The land where the film takes place was reminiscent of something out of Studio Ghibli at times, and Dreamworks’ “Prince of Egypt” at others. Despite that, it stood out as its own thing, unable to be equated to anything, or replicated.

While all works could fit the category of “Afrofuturism,” many deviated from one theme or genre. “The Burden,” directed by Tish Arand, is a satire that interrogates how non-Black society co-opts Black culture when it is advantageous to them—specifically, the use of the N-word—and set on an Earth where Black people flee on spaceships after the results of the 2024 election make the planet ideologically inhospitable. 

Galloway’s own film, “Infused Tea from the Motherland,” is an ode to queer joy, Black joy, and love in the district. In her own words, it’s “the unlikely, colorful love story of a Guinean diplomat and a D.C. Imhotep artist.”

Galloway fell in love with screenwriting at Columbia University’s screenwriting program. After being empowered by her teachers, she pursued broadcast journalism at American University, citing how transferable the skills of broadcast are to film, and vice versa. When she realized that film was her true calling, she returned to the craft at Emerson College to pursue a master’s in writing for TV and film. 

“After that, I knew, just from all the things I learned at Emerson, that if you really want to make it in the film industry, you have to just do it yourself,” Galloway said. “No one’s just going to hand you a multi-million dollar deal. I took that to heart.”

Galloway, who turned 25 last month, says that working hard for this kind of representation is a large part of healing her inner child.

“My biggest motivator to do this is my childhood self. She never saw herself represented in the ways that I am now representing what I never saw—in a positive light,” Galloway said. “The work right now feels more prevalent than ever, and it makes it all the more gratifying because I know I’m doing it for her.” 

Afrofuturism, Galloway believes, also encompasses spirituality in a lot of ways. Growing up in a non-denominational Black church, which put a strong emphasis on matriarchy in her community, undoubtedly informs her creative expression today.

“God was always depicted as agender [or] a woman, [or] a man. God was not a white-man-in-the-sky type of thing. God was a lot more fluid—in their prayers, they say ‘Father Mother God’ … I never felt confined to a certain practice,” Galloway said.

Many Christian spiritual practices are actually rooted in African spirituality, Galloway said. From the significance of the cosmos to the way religion informs everyday society like politics, art, and culture, a church becomes much more: a community. A vessel for creativity. Potent grounds for something not just religious, but damn near magical. 

“That’s what I owe everything in my life to,” she said. “Everything is God. God is the universe … The entity that brings everything to life, however you want to call it, is always around us.”

Her company, Conscious Creations LLC, is informed by these core beliefs. It came to life in 2020 after an abbreviated study-abroad stint in Morocco, shortened due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when many turned to faith for guidance and hope of better days. Given the mental health toll that isolation took on the people around her, Galloway started to monetize her skills and give readings to her friends. Over time, it grew into a fashion brand and then jewelry boutique (“During COVID, I had a lot of downtime,” she laughed), before becoming a production company. While it continues to be all these things, its film productions are the primary focus now. 

One could attribute such a versatile creator and jack-of-all-trades to many different factors, but Galloway certainly credits her liberal arts education and in part, her time at Emerson too.

“I learned a lot from Emerson. I’m pursuing my Ph.D. now because of Emerson. We had a very well-rounded curriculum, we had so many good professors,” she said. “Shoutout to Jim Lane, who runs the program that I was in.”  

After we talked, she sat down in the quaint theater, with its gold embellishments, velvet seats, and faded wallpaper, shifting nervously in her chair as the first film started. Before my eyes, I saw the fruition of what she had described to me before. A work in progress since May, the festival was now tangible, the screen illuminated, and my senses excited. 

How powerful is it to watch rocket ships fly by on screen, in a theater built over 150 years ago? That is, in essence, Afrofuturism. A commitment to the past as well as an intention for the future. 

Each film was true to Galloway’s vision for the festival: brilliant, immersive, dynamic pieces of storytelling with characters that made you feel as if they were real. You can see the virtues Galloway speaks of embedded in the work she hand-selected to be featured in this curation, from inner child work to community, to self-love, to liberation. The result is a colorful, imaginative, vibrant spectacle of celebration, triumph in the face of adversity, and humanity.