Alile Sharon Larkin is an artist-educator and award-winning independent film and videomaker. A public school teacher in Los Angeles for over 25 years, Larkin has long included filmmaking as an integral part of her interdisciplinary curriculum, and her film projects often directly address issues of race, class, and identity. Her films include Dreadlocks and the Three Bears (1991), a retelling of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” with a Black female protagonist, and Mz Medusa (1998), a short narrative based on a student’s negative remark about Black hair.

The BFCA’s Alilie Sharon Larkin Collection gathers 16mm prints and original elements for two of Larkin’s films—Your Children Come Back to You (1979), which examines experiences of Black assimilation into U.S. society from a child’s point of view, and A Different Image (1982), a feature-length narrative exploring themes of body image and Western ideals of beauty and sexuality.

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