we dream of a space
where the process of filmmaking and its barriers can be reimagined, and where a network of queer self-taught artists of color can share resources to achieve a vision of economic autonomy and artistic bliss.
Studio Lalala is a cooperative project with four core members and a large network of artists, collaborators, and mentors. Scroll down to read about our team.
Jazz Franklin
Maya pen
juicebox p. Burton
Elvira castillo
Studio Lalala was started in 2019 by founders Juicebox Burton and Alli Logout as a way of creating a name and a space for Black queer filmmakers to work together to create work with the same resources. As their mission started to attract a network of like-minded creators, they realized there was a universal need to build a strong local group of filmmakers that could meet eachothers needs through community, work opportunity, and co-creation. They were joined in 2020 by Maya Pen, who began working initially on the duo's projects as a special effects artist. Together, the three started to broaden and expand the idea of Studio Lalala as a space where the process of filmmaking and its barriers could be reimagined, and where a network of queer self-taught artists could share resources to achieve a vision of economic autonomy and artistic bliss.
Since its conception, Studio Lalala has worked on a number of music videos, commercials, and short films, winning awards such as the Warner Brothers Innovation Hub and showing in galleries such as Southern Exposure in San Fransisco CA. While the Studio has produced with and on behalf of folks who span race, generations, and class, everything we do is grounded in the mission to support our community of queer self-taught artists of color in our right to create ANYTHING WE WANT. In January of 2023, we were able to secure a physical space to continue building as a well-resourced production company. We are now in the process of moving towards formalizing as a worker-owned cooperative studio, so that we can continue in our mission of owning the work that we do, grounded in liberation.
For more info on how to work with us on your next project, check out our services. To tour or book our space, read more about it here.
What we do
Studio Lalala aims to make stunning work while sustaining a space for our communities to learn, play, and get paid. Some of the ways we do this:
~provide hands on education to QTBIPOC artists~
~raise funds and offer our labor to sponsor important underfunded work~
~produce work for QTBIPOC orgs and individuals at an affordable rate~
~offer our equipment to members of our community~
~assemble full production teams to staff various kinds of community and commercial projects~
~employ self-taught members of our community to produce commercial and community work~
~offer community members a physical space for people to affordably produce their work, and take on the work of their clients~
Jazz Franklin
Maya pen
juicebox p. Burton
Elvira castillo
Jazz's filmmaking praxis plays with power and possibility. She learned the fundamentals of storytelling by working as a camera operator and editor at the Center for Public Television (CPT) in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. During her four years at CPT, she he was nominated for a regional Emmy for her co-editing work on the documentary Preserving Justice. Since moving to New Orleans, she's worked as a camera operator on shows like My Amazing Cheap Date(2021) and Sean Patton: Number One which aired on peacock in 2022. Currently, she is working on several short documentaries with Frontline Media Network and Fossil Free Media centering the climate crisis and stories of Black and Indigenous people in the Gulf Coast Region of the US South.
@alabamaqueer
Maya is a community taught interdisciplinary artist based in New Orleans. Her work gives voice to personal and collective histories through mythology and magic across SPFX, scenic arts, photography, film, writing, and sound.
Her work has been exhibited in galleries in San Fransisco, New Orleans, and Berlin. She is a member of the steering committee of Cooperation New Orleans, serves on the editorial staff for literature collective Tilted House, and is a recent member of Latinx art collective, Colectiva Manos.
@mayapen
Juicebox P. Burton is a community taught cinematographer, their art practice is a protective response to ancestral trauma and integration. Growing up a Black, gnc, trans person, they often felt like the villain in the movie. Villains are the weird, the outcasts, and the misunderstood. They harness the things that ostracize them and turn them into power. Juicebox’s life's work starts with intention, making work that represents the power, beauty and pain of ancestry is strongest when made alongside people who relate to its message.
@oppressedjuice
Elvira Michelle (b. 1992, New Orleans, LA based) is an emerging self-taught multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker. Born and raised in Miami, Florida and of Bolivian descent, her work explores intergenerational memory and trauma and how it manifests in the experience of marginalized communities. She is an active member of The Front Art Collective and The New Orleans Film Society. She has exhibited work locally at The Front Gallery, The Parlour Gallery, The CAC and 912 Studios in New Orleans. She has also exhibited work internationally at Echo’s Studio in São Paolo, Brazil, The Cica Museum in South Korea, and The Holy Art Gallery in London, UK.
@elviramichelle_