Cardozo held its second annual Entertainment (E-Law) Week with a panel of experts in the art, filmmaking and archival industries to celebrate the life and work of Gordon Parks. A photographer, musician, writer and film director, Parks was the first African American photographer for Life and Vogue magazines. Panelists for the event were John Maggio, Emmy award-winning principal producer, director and writer at Ark Media; Philip Brookman, Consulting Curator at the National Gallery of Art; Julieanna L. Richardson, Founder and President of The HistoryMakers; and photographer Wing Young Huie. Charity Gates '20, Associate at The Nilson Law Group, PLLC, moderated the panel. Art and Advocacy — The Work of Gordon Parks, a Cardozo Art Law Society event, was co-sponsored by the FAME Center, the Black Law Students Association, the Filmmakers' Legal Clinic and The Nilson Law Group, PLLC.

These two events followed an alumni spotlight with Aliya Nelson ’01, Partner at Greenspoon Marder LLP, who spoke with Dean Melanie Leslie about her 20+ years of corporate, entertainment and licensing experience.

Gates kicked off the event by showing a clip from Maggio’s film A Choice of Weapons: Inspired By Gordon Parks, which follows Parks’ career from staff photographer for LIFE magazine through his artistic development as a novelist and filmmaker. Maggio emphasized the importance of Parks’ work in his own filmmaking journey. “As a documentarian, I was encountering his photos all of the time,” he said. “I wanted to celebrate him in that way: through the power of imagery.” 

Gates turned to Richardson, who interviewed Parks, and described the transcript as reading like a script. Richardson said his life epitomizes what we think of as the best of the American experience: “He was able to take all of his gifts and cross racial and social boundaries, creating a body of work that will inform us for generations.” 

“He set out to make a picture of this community that was being ignored, and was not being represented through an African American lens,” Brookman echoed.  

Huie, whose photography and studio art has been heavily influenced by Parks, shared an excerpt from the foreword he wrote to a 2010 re-edition of A Choice of Weapons, Parks’ autobiography. He read several passages aloud. “Through Gordon Parks’ eyes, which were extraordinary, we saw reality – raw and unfiltered,” he remarked. “He showed the world as it is, not how he wanted it to be.” 

Cardozo Entertainment Law Society presented Diversity in Music, a panel discussion on the roles lawyers can pursue within the music industry. The group discussed the differences between transactional and litigation work as well as the differences between in-house and law firm experiences. Panelists were Brooke Ford '17 and Samantha Dunac of Sony Music Entertainment, Giovanna Marchese '17 of Kuhn Law Group PLLC, Danielle Hardy of Universal Music Group and Carron Mitchell of Hertz Lichtenstein Young & Polk LLP. 2Ls Joseph Bellamy and Brianna Bell moderated the conversation. The panel was co-sponsored by the FAME Center and the Black Law Students Association. 

Bellamy highlighted some statistics about the lack of diversity in the music law industry and how women, people of color and LGBTQ people are disproportionately underrepresented in the space.  

“There has always been a stigma around who your attorney should be and that a woman can’t fight for you as hard as a man can,” Mitchell responded. “But in the last couple of years, I have seen a shift in artists wanting their representatives to look more like them.” 

“I’m doing what I can to try to make changes in the spaces I can,” said Hardy. “I started an Employee Resource Group at Universal where we connect black executives and colleagues to show that there is diversity here. We might not see it every day, but it exists.”