Nyjia July

Nyjia is a Washington D.C. native and attended Duke Ellington School of the Arts with a major in Literary Media. She attended college at the University of the Arts with a major in documentary film and a minor in digital journalism. Nyjia has worked with filmmaker Marc Levin and Black Public Media. She has previously worked on the PBS documentary THROUGH A LENS DARKLY, and the Emmy-nominated BRICK CITY. She became a Corporation for Public Broadcast diversity fellow and a digital media producer with CAAM, the Center for Asian American Media. With CAAM Nyjia created original content and helped program their international film festival. She’s worked in development with MTV and has been a segment and field producer on numerous docuseries and reality shows. Nyjia’s first documentary JUST US examines the epidemic of generational imprisonment. She was in the SOURCE Magazine as one of 25 women to watch. Her second documentary LISTEN TO MY HEARTBEAT, looks at the gentrification of Washington, D.C. through the gaze of the city’s folkloric music. LISTEN TO MY HEARTBEAT, has been awarded development support through ITVS’s Diversity Development Fund and is amid production. Nyjia was a BAVC MediaMaker Fellow and was a part of SUNDANCE and Women in Film’s Financing and Strategy Intensive for Independent Women Filmmakers. Nyjia completed the Joan Scheckel directing lab and was a BLACK PUBLIC MEDIA 360 Incubator fellow for 2019.

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ABOUT LISTEN TO MY HEARTBEAT

Washington, D.C. may be the political epicenter of the world, but residents beyond Capitol Hill have long battled socioeconomic disparity and fought to have their voice heard. As the city gentrifies, Black residents have been pushed to the outskirts, along with their homegrown folkloric music: Go-Go. Listen To My Heartbeat looks at the Gentrification of Washington, D.C. but through the lens of Go-Go music. We peel back the layers on a changing city, the people displaced, and the future of the music that gave them a voice. Listen To My Heartbeat isn’t just about gentrification, it’s a film about erasure—erasure of a people, and their voice.

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