Aishah Shahidah Simmons is an award-winning African-American feminist lesbian documentary filmmaker, international lecturer, published writer, and activist.  A native Philadelphian, she spent eleven years, seven of which were full time, to produce/write/direct NO!, the award-winning feature length documentary about intra-racial rape, sexual assault, and healing in African-American communities.

Ms. Simmons is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including the International Federation of Black Prides, the DC Rape Crisis Center's Visionary Award; a major grant from the Ford Foundation to support the international educational marketing and distribution of NO!; the 2006 National Award for Outstanding Response to and Prevention of Sexual Violence from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center; Leeway Foundation's 2005 Transformation Award; an Artist-in-Residency at Spelman College's Digital Moving Image Salon; and several production/post production grants from the Valentine Foundation, the Bread and Roses Community Fund, Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice,  the Delaware Valley Legacy Fund of the Philadelphia Foundation, and the Gloria Steinem Fund of the Ms. Foundation for Women.

Ms. Simmons has lectured on and written several articles/essays, which are featured in several anthologies and journals in the United States and in England, France, and Italy, about the impact of the intersections of oppressions on Black women’s lives. She has also facilitated workshops on how to use cultural work to educate about and heal from sexual violence; and the process of making grassroots social change documentaries, to racially and ethnically diverse audiences across the United States and internationally. 

Through intimate testimonies from Black women victim/survivors, commentaries from acclaimed African-American scholars and community leaders including Johnnetta B. Cole, Ulester Douglas, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Sulaiman Nuriddin, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Rev. Traci West, and Elaine Brown, impacting archival footage, spirited music, dance, and performance poetry by Samiya A. Bashir, Honorée Fannone Jeffers, and the late Essex Hemphill, NO! unveils the reality of rape, other forms of sexual assault, and healing in African-American communities.    Since its release in 2006, NO! has been screened extensively at conferences, colleges/universities, film festivals, high schools, rape crisis centers, and battered women’s shelters across the United States and in Spain, Italy, South Africa, Hungary, and Mexico. Winner of both a juried award and an audience choice award at the 2006 San Diego Women Film Festival, this ground-breaking feature length documentary explores the unfortunate international reality of rape and other forms of sexual assault through first person testimonies, scholarship, and activism of African-Americans.

www.NOtheRapeDocumentary.org