Bessie Stringfield documentary short eligible for 2025 Oscars

“To Myself, With Love: The Bessie Stringfield Story” is Academy Award-eligible for Best Documentary Short Film as voting begins this week for the year’s best in cinema.

The award winning 2024 effort covers the life and fame of Bessie Stringfield, the North Carolina-born “Motorcycle Queen of Miami” whose defiant spirit took her across the country on two wheels and a prayer. 

“We are hopeful to make the shortlist,” said director Diane Weis, whose film qualified for voting with a weeklong run this fall at the Laemmle Monica Film Center in Santa Monica, California.

The film, which features rare recordings of Stringfield’s voice from a 1990s interview with filmmaker Alice Stone, has been well-received by critics, winning the Special Jury Award at the Oscars-qualifying AmDocs Film Festival in March.

“To Myself, With Love” has since won awards at the Pasadena International Film Festival, USA Film Festival, the Urban Film Festival, and the Soho International Film Festival.

The film was executive produced by Sam Pollard, best known for his collaborations with Spike Lee, including the Oscar-nominated “4 Little Girls.” He was joined by executive producer Gabby Revilla Lugo (“Palm Springs,” “Saint Judy”), and producers Beth Hubbard (of the Oscar-winning “Summer of Soul”) and Kim Dawson (“To Write Love on Her Arms”).

Stringfield, a Catholic and former nun who revved her Harley-Davidsons with a Rosary in tow, is said to have been the first Black woman to ride solo across the country and was one of several civilian dispatch riders for the U.S. Army during World War II. 

She survived racism and sexism in her years as a professional biker and rode for leisure well into her senior years, gaining fame in various locales—especially Florida, where she settled in the 1950s. Stringfield died at 82 in 1993 and was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2002.

“I was always out there by myself,” she says in the documentary of her historic treks on the open road. “[But] I had the man upstairs. He never leads me wrong.”

The Academy’s Documentary Branch begins preliminary voting on eligible films this week, viewing submissions and casting secret ballots to determine which films will make the shortlist. That crop of 15 films is expected to be announced publicly later this month.

A final round of voting will determine the five nominees, which will be announced next year ahead of the 97th Academy Awards broadcast on Sunday, March 2, 2025. The event, to be hosted by Conan O’Brien at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, will be televised live on ABC at 4pm PT.

Nate Tinner-Williams is co-founder and editor of Black Catholic Messenger.

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