- Grace Blake is a renowned film producer and executive behind many of your favorite movies of the '80s and '90s and you probably didn't know. Her keen vision and storytelling made groundbreaking films like Silence of the Lambs, School Daze and The Wiz, major box-office hits and rewrote history as an African American female filmmaker. Blake is also the past Executive Director of the famed Apollo Theatre and past president of New York Women in Film and Television.
Blake came to the United States from Trinidad during the desegregation upheavals of the 1960's and made the leap from a secretarial jobs to her film career after visiting the set of the Sidney Poitier film "For Love of Ivy."- IMDb Mini Biography By: Antonio Kelley
- Blake came to the United States from Trinidad during the desegregation upheavals of the 1960's.
- Grace Blake worked steadily with some of film's top directors for nearly 25 years while raising three children.
- Ms. Blake officially began her production career as a production assistant on "Shaft" in 1971.
- Grace Blake is the fifth of 12 children.
- Grace Blake was born in Venezuela.
- I am proud of the fact that as a Black woman my experience int e film industry was comfortable empowering and mentored. There was never a moment when I felt unaccepted. My personality and background coming from Venezuela prepared me to work with all types of people and never felt that I did not belong. Often times our mind limits us.
- The most important concept to understand and master is film-making Learn everything you can, make films, write, and go to school and network. Also, the first opportunity you get to enter the union-do it. It is still difficult to penetrate however it is possible. Lastly, we need to write and create our stories; there are not enough stories about us (still).
- I have three children, and they are black... I want them to have the same opportunities as anyone else. I don't feel we should always be in the bottom end. It's an exciting business that everybody's interested in and you can make a lot of money. If you're a freelancer and you work hard you can actually choose the work you want to do. It's life! Everybody's interested in it -- watching television, watching movies -- whether they know it or not.
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