One in three women globally experience violence.
—World Health Organization

DOWNLOAD the NO! FILM CREDITS

Fall 2019 marked both the 25th anniversary of the first pre-production meeting for NO! The Rape Documentary, and the publication of the love WITH accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse anthology. Each of these works are groundbreaking, prevention resources that unwaveringly center diasporic Black survivors of adult rape and child sexual abuse. Aishah Shahidah Simmons, the award-winning director of the film, and the organizer and editor of the 2020 Lambda Award-winning anthology, partnered with the University of Pennsylvania, the Just Beginnings Collaborative, the Feminist and Gender Studies Program at Colorado College, Scribe Video Center, African American Museum in Philadelphia, Leeway Foundation, and other sponsors/partners to present, #FromNO2Love: Black Feminist Centered Forum on Disrupting Sexual Violence in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 31, 2019 - November 1, 2019.

Over 70-Black feminist-centered scholars, activists, and artists from across the U.S. and in France, the Netherlands, and Hungary, including the majority of the NO! onscreen contributors, filmmakers, scholar-activist advisors, translators, study guide authors, and the love WITH accountability anthology contributors were in attendance. Placing NO! and love WITH accountability at the center, #FromNO2Love specifically addressed disrupting and ending childhood sexual abuse and adult rape without relying upon the criminal justice apparatus that disproportionally criminalizes, arrests and imprisons Black, Indigenous, and People of Color further destabilizing our families and communities.
(Click here to view the downloadable program guide and the full list of speakers, attendees, and guests.)

To commemorate the convergence of these milestones, the international gathering lifted the long-term and new survivor-led work that addresses, disrupts, and works to humanely end child sexual abuse and adult rape in Black and marginalized communities. The recordings of this herstoric gathering are available for free viewing on the AfroLez® Productions YouTube and Vimeo channels.

The NO! Buzz

If the Black community in the Americas and in the world would heal itself, it must complete the work this film [NO!] begins.
—Alice Walker, National Book and Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Color Purple among many titles, and global human rights activist

[NO!] helps raise awareness about sexual assault and violence. Especially useful for counselors working with high-school and college students facing similar pressures and situations.
—Booklist

"[Aishah Shahidah Simmons’] political and artistic approach, which [simultaneously] questions the oppression of race, sex, gender, and class, seems relevant to make visible, at all levels, and mainly in the African American community, the violence against [Black] women, lesbians, and girls.”
—Amnesty International, French Section

[…] “Thank you, my sister, Aishah, for this glorious film [NO!]. This most important film that should be shown in every junior high, high school, and every place where there are women. Then, it should be shown to men. This sister Aishah. This child of our womb of resistance… If you think of Aishah, you must think of resistance. It is intrinsic in her body…in her womb. This young woman said, “I want to be heard. You need to hear this part of our struggle and finally, we listened to our sister because of people like sister Toni Cade Bambara and brother Essex Hemphill. We thank you dear sister. You are a pioneer of discussing things kept quiet in the country, in the houses in the doorways, in the bedrooms hidden in plain sight, in our homes, schools and churches even. The folds of rape covering our young girls and boys…. I am reminded with Aishah’s activism what my dear sister Alice Walker said, “Activism is the rent I pay for being on this planet.”  Aishah sought to inform us, to tell us and make us fully aware of what it really means in this country and in this world to be raped… to be hidden in a family that does not want to talk molestation… What an honor to be here to celebrate 25-years of NO! with sister Aishah. Twenty-five years ago I was in my 60s. I am now 85-years old. What an honor to be on this earth surrounded by women and men who understand what it truly means to be an activist.”[…]
—Sonia Sanchez, Award-winning Poet, Activist, and Scholar
(Excerpted remarks during the 25th Anniversary of the Making of NO! screening at #FromNO2Love on October 31, 2019.)

 Given the level of violence against women in the U.S, we owe it to ourselves and to future generations not to turn our backs on this film [NO!]. For in ignoring this film we would once again be ignoring the voices of women.
—Kevin Powell, Activist and Author of The Education of Kevin Powell: A Boy’s Journey into Manhood

"NO! is a necessary message, and how powerful it is to have these women tell it!. Then I thought, what a truly Bodhisattvic activity this is! And then, I realized how long ago Aishah made the film, and how long she worked on it and I just give thanks."
— Dr. Jan Willis, Scholar and Author of Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist and Buddhist--One Woman's Spiritual Journey

 “NO! The Rape Documentary serves to heal generational wounds within the Black community as well as uphold the dignity of all human beings. When we know better, we do better. Thanks, Aishah! A gift to us all”
—Ruth King, Author of Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out and Healing Rage: Women Making Inner Peace Possible

The power of NO! Lies not just in regaining lost voices, but in re-visioning and repositiioning Black women’s history and current reality… One of the strengths of the film is that it does not show the women broken. They come across as whole human beings with agency and insight.
—Walidah Imarisha, Co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, and author of Angels with Dirty Faces: The Stories of Crime, Prison, and Redemption  

"It is not an exaggeration to say that Aishah Shahidah Simmons's groundbreaking film NO! The Rape Documentary saved my life. The ceremony of this film, and the brave generosity of the survivors who shared their stories showed me how to love a part of myself I would have otherwise tried to throw away. The blessing of watching this film taught me that my survival is powerful and necessary, a divine imperative to transform the world. I believe that EVERYone who loves anyone, anyone who believes in change, anyone who believes a more loving world is possible should watch and study and share and gather around this crucial film."
—Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Author of Dub: Finding Ceremony

 “I first came across Aishah Shahidah Simmons' work in late 1998 when I was co-curating a film festival for the OutWrite conference in Boston in 1999. Back then "NO! The Rape Documentary' was only a 10-minute work in progress. I was so moved by the piece and noticed how relevant, important, and groundbreaking the work was, that I felt compelled to program it even at that stage. NO! breaks silence on violence against women through multiple voices, with so much sensitivity including the filmmaker's personal experience on this subject. It's a film that still holds so much significance even today, 12-years after it was released, that I will screen it in a course I teach on 'Black Women in Cinema' in Spring 2019."
—Sonali Gulati, Guggenheim Award-winning Filmmaker and Professor of Photography and Film

 Aishah’s work is about the [Black] community, the village, and us. Aishah’s work is unapologetically political and irresistibly beautiful. NO! is a healing gift for us all.
—Linda Janet Holmes, Author of A Joyous Revolt Toni Cade Bambara: Writer and Activist, and Co-Editor of Savoring the Salt: The Life and Legacy of Toni Cade Bambara (excerpted remarks during the 25th Anniversary of the Making of NO! screening at #FromNO2Love on October 31, 2019)

 "A visionary, essential, analytic, raw, and internationally acclaimed black feminist text on rape and sexual assault. As much as NO! requires we tell the truth about experiences, it implores us to explicitly call out rape and the rapists in our immediate communities. This is where restorative justice begins."
—Dr. Tamura A. Lomax, Scholar and Author of Jezebel Unhinged: Loosing the Black Female Body in Religion & Culture

 “Heartbreaking, personal, and ultimately empowering… Not only does Simmons’s ground-breaking film break a pervasive deadly silence, it reaffirms the power of a Black woman’s truth.”
—Dr. Joan Morgan, Scholar and Author of When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down

  "With the eye of a poet and the rigor of a sociologist, Aishah Shahidah Simmons exposes an ugly reality of sexual violence. This is cinematic activism at its finest, as it is both a call to action and an expertly constructed documentary."
—Dr. Gerald Horne, Scholar and Author of Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham DuBois

“Filmmaker Aishah Shahidah Simmons dares to ‘speak truth to power’ with emphatic power that very exclamation NO! is intended to convey.”
—Dr. Mark Anthony Neal, Author of New Black Man

A Black woman who has the audacity to vocalize her experiences as a victim of rape or sexual assault still runs the risk of her sexuality and/or her sexual herstories being used to excuse her perpetrator. Further, the Blackness of her perpetrator - which is, unfortunately, still most often the case - will likely be used to erase her own. More specifically, a Black woman who names her rape or assault still runs the risk of being accused of trying to hold “her brother” down, as though him holding her down means nothing. She may have even stood next to her people yelling, “Defund the police!” while simultaneously being told she was a fool for not calling them when she was assaulted, most often by someone close. Aishah has never stood for this kind of empty Black love—Black love with no accountability, Black love that only matters for some of us some of the time, seemingly never at all for others. Aishah has always demanded we take our claims of and to love seriously, aiming for a solidarity that moves us beyond catchy slogans and toward a necessary habit of thinking carefully about and working to genuinely repair the harm we do, even (arguably especially) when we have also contended with systemic and systematic oppression. NO! as a work-in-progress has been doing that for over 25-years, and as a completed film for over 15-years. Whether you’re engaging it for the first time or one of many, may we all join Aishah, her powerful collaborators, and every single victim-survivor of rape and sexual assault by screaming, “NO! No more!” to all perpetrators at all times. 
—Dr. Heidi R. Lewis, Director and Associate Professor of Feminist & Gender Studies and Inaugural Coordinator of Early Career Faculty Development Programs at Colorado College