Over the past twenty-five years, the Creatively Speaking Film Series has become known as the leading film series presenting independently produced media, conveying realistic, complete depictions of people of color Creatively Speaking brings together an array of audiences – artists and activists, students, academics and film aficionados. Creatively Speaking programs are appropriate in educational settings, museums and media arts organizations, as well as in theatrical cinemas. The Creatively Speaking team consists of filmmakers, curators, scholars, film students, community activists and other film professionals, well-versed in facilitating dialogue across a range of audiences about the art and craft of filmmaking as well as the social issues presented in the films. Engaging in progressive, thought-provoking dialogue following each screening is a trademark of the Creatively Speaking experience. Shorts, documentaries and narrative films tell universal stories that visually represent our mission – “changing the cultural narrative…one image at a time”. In February 2015, Creatively Speaking co-presented the unprecedented film series “Tell It Like it Is: Black Independents in NYC 1968-1986”, with The Film Society of Lincoln Center and awarded the Film Heritage Award by the National Society of Film Critics. Another series presented in March 2017 at BAMcinématek, "One Way or Another: Black Women Filmmakers 1970 - 1991", was acknowledged by Richard Brody, of The New Yorker Magazine, as "The Best Repertory Series of 2017" as well as awarded the "Film Heritage" Award of 2017  by the National Society of Film Critics.

Michelle Materre is the founder, lead curator and producer of Creatively Speaking. As Associate Professor of Media Studies and Film at The New School. Materre’s professional background incorporates multiple areas of expertise as film producer, writer, lecturer, arts administrator, distribution/marketing specialist, film programmer, media consultant, and Caribbean film scholar. In 1992, Ms. Materre co-founded KJM3 Entertainment Group, which directly managed the marketing, positioning and distribution of over twenty-three films by filmmakers of African descent including Daughters of the Dust, the highly acclaimed film by Julie Dash, as well as L’Homme Sur Les Quais (The Man By the Shore) by Raoul Peck. Ms. Materre is a current member of the Board of Directors of Women Make Movies and a former member of the Board of Directors of New York Women in Film and Television. She is a recipient of the “Distinguished Teaching Award” from The New School in 2005; a recipient of The Pen and Brush Society’s ‘Accomplished Women in the Arts’ Award; as well as a featured artist in the much-acclaimed annual journal documenting contemporary artists,  Artist and Influence, produced and published by the Hatch-Billops Collection.