Don’t call it Black Sundance.
It was dubbed that way in Ebony magazine, black star film festivalis a unique cultural facility celebrating its 11th anniversary this year. The Independent, like its Park City counterpart BlackStar, focuses on his cinema. Opening Wednesday in Philadelphia, he will screen 77 feature films and short films from around the world. Black, brown and indigenous artists. But as a regular at the festival, I’ve always been impressed by how ambitious bridges between cultural specificity, social justice and avant-garde make for an evocative, expansive and revelatory cinematic experience.
Founded in 2012 by Maori Kalmael Holmes, it was conceived as a one-off event to showcase black films that had not been screened in the Philadelphia area. “I just got back from Los Angeles and felt like there was a gap in Philadelphia for these particular pieces,” Holmes told me. , I started collecting films that didn’t show in the area, and soon I had a list of 30 films, so I decided to turn this into a film festival.”
“This was meant to be a one-off celebration,” explained Holmes, who is now the artistic director and CEO of BlackStar Projects, the organization behind the festival. But after more than 1,500 people attended, and Ebony and director Ava DuVernay mentioned the festival in an interview with The New York Times, “Suddenly we got so much attention and people were like, ‘When’s next? I asked.”
The gathering quickly gained a reputation as the go-to festival for emerging and established black experimental filmmakers. Terrence Nance probably knows this better than any other director. Creator of his genre-defying TV series Random Acts of Flyness, his features and shorts have been screened at the festival every year since its inception.
“BlackStar has been a cornerstone for me,” said Nance. “Before the pandemic, it was an annual event in Philadelphia where those of us interested in black cinema projects would come together, kick it, and see what explored the language, spirit, and way of black cinema. It was the touchpoint of the summer of 2019. It doesn’t exist anywhere else on this scale.”
But it’s also an opportunity to share new work and receive critical feedback, a rare venue for filmmakers of color, especially those pushing the boundaries of their own format. The experimental short film ‘Vortex’, directed by Nance and Ricky Wright, will premiere at this year’s festival. “Your movie was great, but people will tell you what went wrong,” Nance explained. If you have good words LoveI think that’s how communities become sophisticated and stick with each other. “
a festival named Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey’s international shipping line offers viewers unique access to political and highly experimental films from across the African diaspora. “What I am really proud of is BlackStar’s global vision,” said Nehad Khader, the festival’s director. “We’re interested in black stories, but we’re also really interested in black stories on the continent, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Canada.” And the festival has always featured filmmakers of color. Although (Khader himself is a Palestinian-American director), their participation is now a definite part of the selection process. (The organization has received 1,200 submissions this year alone.)
“BlackStar started with a focus on black cinema and then expanded to brown cinema and indigenous cinema,” said Khader. “Now we have stories not only of black people in Asia and the Arab world, but also stories of indigenous peoples in Australia and Peru. This is how I think.”
This year’s program includes socially relevant, fantastical, futuristic and family films.
Mahamat Saleh Haroon’s “Sacred Bond, LinguiFor example, a tender and intimate Chad drama about single mother Amina (Achoackh Abakar Souleymane) and her struggle to help her 15-year-old daughter Maria (Rihane Khalil Alio) receive a safe abortion. . illegal country. While the film tells the story of the larger battle for reproductive rights, it also takes us to the outskirts of Chad’s capital, N’Djamena, to explore the vibrancy and vulnerability of women’s lives in this Muslim-majority country. It’s also a warm, tightly woven tale that shows sexuality. “Haroun has a gift for extracting a lot of meaning in his frank, clear and balanced visuals,” Manohra Dargis wrote in his February review.
In many respects, the documentary “Rewind & play“Everything is like dialogue,” by French filmmaker Alain Gomis. was interviewed Hours under the hot lights of a Parisian television studio by fellow musician Henri Renault. But rather than recreate the false sense of camaraderie that Renault strived for, Gomis blends the original footage with outtakes from the archives to expand our assessment of Monk’s genius, and the white Renault. criticizing how (and thus the mass media) sought to shape and create stereotypical representations of the black avant-garde. Gomis argues that Monk’s silence (Renault tells producers, “I think it’s best to turn it off” when he voices his opinion) helps him avoid and transcend Renault’s racist gaze. and how it worked as a strategy to assert Monk’s agency and artistry.
Experimentation rules.”one take graceis the documentary debut of South African actor and director Lindiwe Matoshikiza. The film is the result of his decade-long collaboration with his 58-year-old black domestic worker, Motiva Grace, from South Africa. Following Vapella’s day-to-day work, revealing her past traumas and exploring her desire to become an actor, the film uses a variety of lenses, including a fisheye lens, to dominate Vapella’s life. Reveal rituals and rules. The result is a dynamic, curious and insightful portrait of a charismatic figure that is usually overlooked. A similar theme of visibility and gender is “Locomote” short programThese include trans activist Elle Moxley’s political coming-of-age story “Black Beauty” and Simone Lee and Madeleine Hunt Ehrlich’s experimental “Conspiracy”. At the 2022 Venice Biennale.
This is one of the main reasons why Nigerian-British filmmaker Jen Nkil, best known for directing Beyoncé’s Grammy-winning video “Brown Skin Girl,” makes a regular pilgrimage to BlackStar. Such diversity in geography, genre, and narrative style. Another thing for her is the sense of community it fosters, making it akin to what she calls “a big, beautiful family reunion.” She said, “Despite being a festival, the level of concern for people’s jobs and welfare was so high, and it’s so indicative of what I envision black filmmaking to be.”
This will be the festival premiere of Out/Side of Time, a short film about a fictional black family living in the 19th century community of Seneca Village in New York City. Originally commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art for “I Could Fly Until Yesterday: A Room in the Afrofuturist Era,” as a five-channel black-and-white video played on what appears to be a 1950s television set In BlackStar, Nkiru’s non-linear, transgenerational story becomes part of a larger conversation about form, temporality and visual language in contemporary black cinema.
“BlackStar turned out to be very experimental in what it showed and celebrated,” she said, adding later. Not only for art production, but also for our nation building. “
The BlackStar Film Festival runs Wednesday through Sunday in Philadelphia. For more information, blackstarfest.org.
