Tina Morton

Tina created a video documentary entitled Belly of the Basin, based on the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and their impact on the South. The film explores what happens to marginalized people displaced by natural disaster, and documents grassroots community-based leaders throughout the South. Tina wanted this video to serve as an organizing and networking tool for groups doing similar work with Katrina victims/evacuees, because people often don't know of others doing similar work in neighboring states. More than just entertainment or information, this film pulls groups together and creates strong political networks. Tina organized screenings across the country, focusing on the areas hit hardest by the hurricanes.

Tina is a media activist deeply committed to facilitating members of community groups in telling their own stories. Her work is that of a video oral historian, documenting community struggles aurally and visually, who shares the perspectives of marginalized people, enabling them to be seen and heard in their own image and voice. Her own work started when she took classes at Scribe Video Center over a decade ago. Since then, she has completed a community history documentary entitled Severed Souls (2001), a 13-year personal journey to chronicle community memory of the execution of Corrine Sykes, a 20-year-old North Philadelphia resident wrongly executed for murder and the first African American woman to be legally executed in Pennsylvania and The Taking of South Central... Philadelphia (2005), a documentary focusing on problems of gentrification affecting many communities. Currently, Tina is working on Belly of the Basin, chronicling the people of New Orleans' voices, voices not drowned out by Katrina but by political red tape. Featuring people's stories of survival and struggle, the film shows the grassroots organizing work happening in response to Katrina devastation and will serve as a movement-building tool by bridging together the different types of organizing work happening across the South from New Orleans to Atlanta to Durham, North Carolina due to Katrina.

Tina will create a video that documents the cultural significance of the ODUNDE festival in South Philadelphia, as one of the oldest and largest African American festivals in the US, and its founder Lois Fernandez. After working with Lois on the 8-minute documentary, The Taking of South Central... Philadelphia (a Precious Places Project of the Scribe Video Center), Tina realized that the story of ODUNDE merited a more detailed video project. This documentary will share this story of a cultural warrior and the importance of her and ODUNDE in Philadelphia and within a global African Diasporic context.