Luchina Fisher
LUCHINA FISHER is an award-winning director, writer and producer whose work is at the intersection of race, gender and identity. Her feature directorial debut MAMA GLORIA is a 2022 GLAAD Media Award nominee, won multiple festival jury awards, and was broadcast on PBS. Her latest film, the short documentary THE DADS, about five fathers of trans kids on a weekend fishing trip, premiered at SXSW. Her short documentary TEAM DREAM won the Audience Choice Award for Best Short Film at the Chicago International Film Festival and Best Documentary at the Pan African and TIDE film festivals and aired on BET. Her second feature about the barriers to Black homeownership premiered at the Freep Festival in April and heads next to the American Black Film Festival in June. Fisher was recently awarded the PitchBLACK Film Forum’s top prize for her new project about Black queer representation in music. She is the director of two scripted short films and has written and produced several nationally broadcast documentaries, including two episodes of the History channel series with President Bill Clinton. Her work has been supported by Black Public Media, the Field Foundation, Sisters in Cinema, Brown Girl Doc Mafia, the Queen Collective, the Athena Film Festival’s Works in Progress Program, Firelight Media and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She also teaches documentary filmmaking at Yale University.
From the Filmmaker
"My dear friend Derrick Milligan started Team Dream, a multisport training and social network for women of color, more than 20 years ago. He once convinced me to run the Chicago marathon, so I knew what a good and persuasive coach he was. Years later, he introduced me to Ann and Madeline, two incredible women of a certain age, who became athletes after retirement. I knew their story deserved to be on the screen. As Black women who grew up amid segregation and before Title IX, Ann and Madeline never stopped dreaming or pushing boundaries. TEAM DREAM is a social justice film disguised as a competition/sports film. It touches on race, gender and aging and highlights some of the history of segregated swimming, while revealing the lost history of Africans and the water. Ultimately, it's a film about friendship and joy, and will have viewers laughing, crying and cheering for our two heroines. TEAM DREAM is for anyone who has ever dreamed, had a dream deferred, and never stopped dreaming. That includes me, and the dream I’ve had ever since I was a little girl to be a filmmaker."
Team Dream
TEAM DREAM follows friends Ann and Madeline on their journey to the National Senior Games, where they compete in the swim events, and nothing -- not age, race or history -- will stand in their way.
LUCHINA FISHER | Director
SHAN SHAN TAM, LUCHINA FISHER | Producers
The film's stars, Ann Smith and Madeline Murphy Rabb are both notable Chicagoans. Besides living in Chicago for decades, Madeline served as the first Black director of the Chicago Arts Council under Mayor Harold Washington and currently works as an artist and curator for African American art. Ann was the first Black woman to win a statewide race in Illinois as a University of Illinois board trustee. Both women became athletes in retirement and compete regularly in the National Senior Games.
