In a world shaped by media, having a significant racial and gender disparity behind the lens can be as catastrophic as having one in front of it. It is no secret that Hollywood often falls short of reflecting the diversity of its audience on the screen, but many are unaware that it happens behind the lens too. Our film and television universe are largely brought to us through the hard work of members of many distinguished unions and you can almost count on it that if you're seeing something on a screen at home or a screen in a theater that it is likely the work of a union production. 

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Unions like the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), Directors Guild of America (DGA), and Producers Guild of America (PGA) might be more familiar to audiences, but beyond those guilds which represent only a select few crew members, are people like us. People who dictate the look, feel, texture, focus, marketing, still, and moving images that so many of us attach emotion to when we think of our favorite shows and movies. Our guild is the national IATSE Local 600, which represents all union publicist and camera crew members across America. Although the Local 600 is 10,082 members nationwide, only 98 of these members are black women & non-binary people, that's .009%.
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Our organization was founded in the Spring of 2022 by Chris Wairegi, a New York City-based Cinematographer and Camera Operator. Her effort to find women, femmes, and non-binary people of the same background led her to the eventual creation and realization of 600 Black Women.

 

600 Black Women is a collective of motion picture filmmakers, stills photographers, and publicists who are black women, femmes, and gender expansive people in the IATSE Local 600 guild.