If not now, when…?
VISION Via a slate of neighbor-produced counterprogramming to mainstream and siliconed, so-called “social” media, Di’Mews will host tv/movie nights & festivals as well as produce ‘hood chat and current event shows that meet greater New Haven neighbors in the middle–in midlife, in the middle of the night, in the middle of social class and identity.
We call ourselves a mews, an old English word for houses closesly situated and for where caged birds of prey were housed, because we both curate conversation and engage with it mercilessly, center it as an art form and means of cultural wisdom preservation and seek to preserve and/or remember the methods by which we communicate.
We celebrate the divine chaotic impurity of handmæd, heartfelt, humanity-driven productions between closely-situated people to foster greater understanding of ourselves and our so-called others.
And we preserve, celebrate and center not only the artist's journey but the outcaste artist herself. This is our way of demonstrating the true power of media, to empower a people instead of disaffecting them, and to connect us instead of spreading delusion, despair, disempowerment and disinformation.
why our hood needs a litehouse 〰️
We are a “Litehouse” because our primary purpose is to emit a frequency of meaningful spectacle for far-flung souls of Diaspora. Di’Mews is the torch held for the independence of the Fourth Estate. We use its light to raise media consciousness in the fight against enlightenment.
Here, in the hum of our little story shop, we stitch together narrative, context, curiosity and sock muppets! We make time and space for slow readings of our messy histories that don’t fit in a thumbnail. We are a reliable GPS, navigating lonely islands of isolated strængers through unsocial media seas of AI slop and weaponized misinformation towards one another. Di’Mews offers our wary community a couch away from home where along with locally-sourced noshes, neighbors can fill up on self-representation and self-agency.
Di’Mews recasts outcaste factions (Black,Indigenous, Latine, immigrant, queer) in starring roles as the real American heros and global citizens we are. In this new light, Diasporacan Americans can see ourselves clearly, as what we truly are—a powerful chapter of an intercontinental, mixed-race majority of Ancestral Americans, the descendants of captive Africans,and Europeans. Welcome to your Litehouse.
Founder, executive in charge of production
Hi, I’m Ani Greenidge and I am your Litehouse Keeper. I have spent my lifetime loving television and culture. So much so that I went to university to learn how good television is made. I was fortunate enough to study documentary production with some of the best at Boston University (COM ‘00) in the late nineties when the internet was a newborn.
Twenty-five years later, I am no longer a new kid on the block. The skills I was given in the art of documentary production and the science of journalism by principled guardians—not unbiased stenographers—of the fourth estate earned me bylines at small but vital and depended upon hometown newspapers like Carib News (New York, NY) and The Examiner News (Hudson Valley, NY). Television production credits include projects with PBS (This Far by Faith), A&E (The Biography of Wayne Gretzky) and The History Channel (Rats, Bats and Bugs!).I left production proper shortly after 9/11, writing as a freelancer occasionally. In a plot twist I couldn’ve never seen coming, I spent the bulk of my career in market research for a well-established NYC firm specializing in healthcare research. I spent almost a decade conducting senior qualitative market research for Deerfield Management and valued what I learned about large-scale research, data and how to analyze it. Still, my years working as a community journalist and documentarian were my most purposeful.
I first conceived of Di’Mews shortly after relocating to New Haven from New York’s Hudson Valley when I realized there was no indie art house in such a culturally rich city. I wanted to reconnect not just my community, but myself, with the process of production. There is joy in handmæd and heartfelt living. I want to experience and spread this joy by establishing and maintaining this showcase for our nuanced, non-binary stories.
I record and curate them in the tradition of Toni Morrison’s Black Book because they are vital tools of reawakening and liberation and they are our birthright. Our stories enable us to hold light and process the shadow of our shared human trip. We gather to bear witness to these salt water stories together in joyful celebration of the power of mythos at the movies, on our homescreens and the stage.
