Genre
Synopsis
After losing her job as a news anchor because she and her husband were expecting a child, Georgia Fort builds an online media empire as an independent journalist, broadcasting to over 140K faithful followers and counting. Described by many as “the movement’s journalist,” Georgia becomes a reliable news source for her community, and a sought after resource to global media during the highly publicized police-involved shootings in Minneapolis and the surrounding area during the global COVID-19 pandemic.
Top stories covered by Georgia and her platform become historical touch points in the police reform conversation in America, including the trials of Derek Chauvin, the former officer who killed George Floyd, and Kim Potter ,the former officer who killed Daunte Wright. With minimal resources but a lot of determination and drive, Georgia emerges as a reliable and trusted voice with a pulse on breaking news and local policing, often including eye-witnesses and perspectives that mainstream media does not.
Fort’s mission to “change the narrative” by exposing and transforming the bias and limitations of the dominant media frameworks in the United States, requires her to also carve out and define a life for herself that is liberated from the systems that once bound her family tree. As the biracial daughter of a white mother, and a Black father whose lives were plagued by the effects of racism, systemic violence, mental illness, poverty, and addiction, Georgia’s upbringing, marked with hardship, shapes a nuanced worldview that honors the humanity of those she encounters when covering a story. She recognizes there are multiple sides to any story, and that her responsibility as a journalist is not to favor one narrative over another, but to report on the facts with transparency. However, this noble ethos is hard to come by in the age of misinformation. As a wife and mother of three, adversity becomes the fuel that propels her to autonomy, and a media platform of her own.
Director Identity
Bio
Maya Washington is an award-winning narrative and documentary filmmaker (writer/director/producer), actress, writer, poet, creative director, visualist (photography) and arts educator. Her award-winning film, "Through the Banks of the Red Cedar, " about her father Vikings Legend Gene Washington and the desegregation of college football aired on the Big Ten Network and is currently available on PBS platforms including PBS Documentaries Channel through Amazon Prime, Comcast, and iTunes. Her memoir, "Through the Banks of the Red Cedar: My Father and the Team that Changed the Game," is an Amazon Editor's Pick for Best History. Her award winning-film CLEAR, about a family reconnecting in the aftermath of wrongful conviction is available on the streaming platforms Argo and Kwelitv. As a freelance tv and film director, Maya directed episodes of the Fox series The Killer Next Door and History Channel’s I Was There, both from Committee Films, and the PBS Kids series Black SciGirls. Her award-winning narrative short, White Space, (starring ABC Family Switched at Birth’s Ryan Lane) about a deaf performance poet aired on network television and was nominated for a Black Reel Award. Maya Washington’s commercial work includes Best Buy, Target, The National Society of Leadership and Success and others.
