As a north-american director and independent producer, Aina consistently focuses her practice on the theme of the african-diaspora and its social and individual repercussions. The director was born in 1955, in Detroit, and has been associated with the L.A. Rebellion movement, also known as ‘Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers’: a generation of filmmakers from the 60s to the 80s of UCLA, creators of a revolutionary Black Cinema diverging from Hollywood conventions and attentive to the real african-american lived experiences.
Upon concluding her studies in 1982, she founded the distribution company Mypheduh Films, Inc., a relevant agent in the distribution of many films by african-american filmmakers and colleagues in the following decades.
Also in the same year, she directed the documentary short film Brick by Brick, on the human impact of the gentrification of african-american neighborhoods in Washington D.C. Together with Hail Gerima, she co-produced the acclaimed feature film Sankofa (1993) - which evoques a slave heritage and ancestral revolt. Yet, her personal work remains documental: Through the Door of No Return (1997), has the director retracing her father’s entrepreneurial yet tragic trip to Ghana and consequent death, and Footprints of Pan-Africanism (2017) revisits the independence process of Ghana, and the ascension of Kwame Nkrumah as the country’s president.
Aina was also the cinematographer in other documentary productions like Politics of African Cinema and On Becoming a Woman. She runs the Sankofa Video and Bookstore, has teached Film in Howard University and founded another production company Negod Gwad Productions, for drama and documentary.
