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Category Archives: African American Films

At Cannes, challenging the notion that black films ‘don’t travel’

15 May

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CANNES, France — In 1995, Will Smith begged producer Jerry Bruckheimer to let him go to the Cannes Film Festival to promote “Bad Boys,” despite the parent studio’s insistence that a black actor would not get any traction with the international fans and journalists thronging the city’s beach-side promenade, the Croisette. Bruckheimer and Columbia Pictures eventually relented: Smith traveled to Cannes, held a news conference, threw a huge MTV party and charmed dozens of interviewers — and “Bad Boys” earned $140 million, nearly half of it overseas. Smith, who would systematically repeat that model in markets from Moscow to Johannesburg, emerged well on his way to international stardom.

As the 66th edition of Cannes gets underway Wednesday, Smith’s example has taken on new resonance — and urgency. For years, black filmmakers, or anyone interested in making movies starring or about black people, have been told that “black doesn’t travel,” the assumption being that the African American experience is too specific to be comprehensible, or commercial, anywhere but in the United States.

But some films coming to Cannes this year are poised to challenge the no-foreign-market assumption: “Sexual Healing,” a drama about the personal and creative resurgence of American singer Marvin Gaye starring Jesse L. Martin, will be in the hunt for international distribution at Cannes, its production having just begun in Ostend, Belgium, where the story is set.

Producer Frederick Bestall admits that financing was difficult to pull together for “Sexual Healing” and that casting a non-superstar in the lead “has its drawbacks” for international sales. But he’s cautiously optimistic that the film will find distributors outside the United States. Noting that Gaye sold more than 100 million records worldwide and that “Sexual Healing” will center on the singer’s relationship with Belgian promoter Freddy Cousaert, Bestall said, the film’s “human-relationship aspects transcend the concept of a black movie per se. I believe if the story is powerful enough and touches the human-nature side of [the story] rather than the race aspect, the film should do well.”

At a time when figures such as Smith, Barack Obama and Michael Jordan are global superstars, the assumption that films by and about black people won’t sell feels counterintuitive, or code for more corrosive biases. “We are stars, we are athletes that are hailed and fawned over throughout the world, our music people are fawned over throughout the world, you would assume the same would apply to our culture,” said director Lee Daniels. “I think it’s some sort of scam. I think something ain’t right in the kitchen.”

The perception that black films can’t open overseas has even more impact today, when international financing has become far more crucial to getting films made and foreign box office can account for between 60 and 70 percent of a movie’s total revenue. As foreign markets gain in importance, Hollywood will be even more prone to make movies that transcend language, with explosions, superheroes and special effects that take the place of dialogue. The troubling result is that fewer films will be made and seen, inside or outside the United States, that offer diverse reflections of American life.

The film industry is rife with examples of anonymous filmmakers who couldn’t get their project off the ground because their star or subject matter was black. But it’s also happened to some of the biggest players in the business. Last year, “Star Wars” creator George Lucas complained that he couldn’t find financing for “Red Tails,” about the Tuskegee Airmen, for just that reason. “They don’t believe there’s any foreign market [for black films],” he told Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.” “And that’s 60 percent of their profit. . . . I showed it to all of them and they said, ‘No. We don’t know how to market a movie like this.’ ” The independent drama “Blue Caprice,” which stars Isaiah Washington in a story based on the 2002 Washington-area sniper case, will not be coming to the Cannes market this year, having failed to secure a high-end international sales agent.

For years, the conventional wisdom that black doesn’t travel has taken on the force of myth. Increasingly in recent years, it looks like the myth might be beginning to crumble. Not only have films starring Smith, Denzel Washington and Queen Latifah succeeded, but even relatively small films with no big names have done well. In 2011, “The Help” earned a surprisingly healthy $42 million overseas and last year “Django Unchained,” Quentin Tarantino’s slavery-era spaghetti Western, broke all the filmmaker’s box office records.

But by far the most impressive groundbreaker recently was “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” which Daniels brought to Cannes in 2009 as part of a far-ranging festival circuit that started with winning a grand jury award at Sundance the previous January. “Precious” featured no international stars to speak of (other than a virtually unrecognizable Mariah Carey) and was set within a highly specific urban American context. And yet the drama was a hit overseas, earning nearly a quarter of its $63 million worldwide gross there.

Daniels credits his early experience as a casting director, and later as a producer and first-time director, with helping to establish relationships with foreign distributors. He also notes that by the time he made “Precious,” he had perfected a way of subtly pushing back against the “black doesn’t travel” assumption.

“If you study my early films, ‘Monster’s Ball,’ ‘The Woodsman,’ ‘Shadowboxer,’ all had black people in them, but they also had viable white stars,” Daniels said. “Since I came from casting, I understood the concept of the value of African Americans overseas — or what Hollywood perceived to be the value of African Americans overseas — versus the white actors. So I’ve always purposely and strategically mixed it up in such a way that I can get my vision out, and at the same time keep my blackness in.”

Daniels’s strategy was never clearer than at Cannes last year: While his lurid Southern potboiler “The Paperboy” was making its wildly polarizing world debut at the festival, he was also drumming up distributors for his next project, “The Butler.” Knowing that the film’s protagonist — a White House butler played by Forest Whitaker — may not automatically garner interest, Daniels larded the production with lots of white stars — including Jane Fonda, James Marsden and Robin Williams — playing White House figures over eight presidential administrations.

“They’re really cameos in the film, but they got the movie green-lit, which was very disturbing,” Daniels said of the white actors in “The Butler.” “But it’s okay, because the script is great and it was a wonderful ‘Kumbaya’ moment for everybody who participated.”

Both Daniels and Will Smith present models worth emulating, said producer Jeff Clanagan, president of CodeBlack Entertainment. “It will take us to push the envelope,” said Clanagan, who plans to take the Kevin Hart documentary “Let Me Explain” to foreign markets where Hart has toured with his stand-up act. “Our talent has to go over there and support it.”

Similarly, Tambay Obenson, editor and chief writer at the film Web site Shadow and Act, noted that black filmmakers need to show up at international festivals such as Cannes, the better to establish the kinds of relationships with film professionals and audiences that held Daniels in such good stead. Some markets hold particularly strong potential: Obenson made a study earlier this year of black-themed films that played overseas and discovered that black American films often did well in South Africa and the United Kingdom.

“ ‘Think Like a Man’ did better in South Africa than ‘Jack Reacher,’ ” said Obenson, referring to the Steve Harvey-inspired rom-com and the Tom Cruise thriller. “It made about twice the box office compared to ‘21 Jump Street.’ When people say things like [black doesn’t travel], they’re saying the rest of world is just made up of white people. Look, there’s an entire continent called Africa with a billion black people on it, and not much of a film industry outside Nigeria and East Africa. There are black people around the world who want to see black people on-screen.”

David Glasser, chief operating officer of the Weinstein Company, which released “Django Unchained” and will distribute “The Butler” in August, believes that the notion of “black doesn’t travel” is on its way to becoming obsolete. “A good movie is a good movie, and these barriers are coming down,” Glasser said. “It’s all about quality now.”

He can point to at least one persuasive example: One of Weinstein’s Sundance acquisitions, the grand jury award-winner “Fruitvale Station,” is a movie by a black filmmaker based on the real-life case of an African American man who was shot to death by a police officer in Oakland, Calif. The film will make its European debut at this year’s Cannes’s “Un Certain Regard” section, with its international distribution territories already sold out.

 
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Posted by on May 15, 2013 in African American Films

 

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There Is an Audience for Our Films: Four African-American Female Filmmakers Speak Out

04 Dec

Lorenza Muñoz moderates a discussion between four African-American filmmakers about race, gender, and connection, and why there is most definitely an audience for their films.

The demise of independent film labels has made it more challenging for new talent—especially nonwhite filmmakers—to tell their stories and gain entry into major studios.


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Over the past two years, a series of vital, powerful and reflective films directed by African-American women have been humming along under the radar of mainstream Hollywood, struggling to get distribution and missing the strong marketing campaigns that catch an audience. Ava DuVernay’s second feature,Middle of Nowhere, won Best Director at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and was recently nominated for four Independent Spirit Awards, and yet she had to establish her own distribution company, AFFRM, African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement, to release her film. Her movie, a critic’s pick described byThe New York Times as a “plaintive, slow-boiling, quietly soul-stirring drama about a woman coming into her own,” is now playing in more than a dozen theaters nationwide.

Victoria Mahoney’s first feature, Yelling to the Sky, features Zoe Kravitz as a teen whose family is coming apart and must find her way in a tough school. The film was nominated for a Golden Bear at the 2011 Berlin Film Festival, but here it will be seen only in one theater in New York this month and on VOD. Tina Mabry’s Mississippi Damned, a family drama set in the Deep South, which won 13 awards in more than a dozen film festivals, was also self-distributed through the production company Morgan’s Mark and later had its television debut on Showtime. So far, Kasi Lemmons—who directed three movies including Eve’s Bayou and Caveman’s Valentine—holds the record for the greatest number of feature films directed by an African-American woman.

It is such a tough road that many filmmakers simply give up. DuVernay, Mahoney, Mabry, and producer/writer Tajamika Paxton sat down with Lorenza Muñoz of The Daily Beast to discuss their films, the state of the industry, and the challenges faced by African-American filmmakers in Hollywood. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation.

So what is it like to be an African-American female director in Hollywood today?

Victoria Mahoney: When we are asked that, part of our ribcage locks because we just see ourselves as filmmakers. But the world wants to define me by my mammary glands and melanin. It is just fascinating that Michael Mann has never been asked what it is like to be a white male filmmaker. I like Michael Mann’s films, and he’s taken very seriously. I feel like a lot of us at this table often get treated like little kids who stumbled on some badass ways to tell a story, but it was all an accident.

Taj Paxton: It’s a reality. I am happy to be a woman and African-American. I can’t focus on a burden. I have to focus on how where I come from makes my position unique and what opportunities emerge from that.

Ava DuVernay: I like to identify myself as a black woman filmmaker. But I am finding that my film is making its way into conversations about Lincoln andDjango Unchained and Beasts of the Southern Wild, so it is being viewed through the prism of race, which is interesting because this film has nothing to do with the others. So in one way you stand yourself proud to call yourself a black woman filmmaker and on the other side it is exhausting to always talk about race and have to defend your film. The times I can actually sit down and actually talk about my film and the filmmaking, not the society we live in, not the politics, but how I worked with my actor and my cinematographer, are few and far between.

Tina Mabry: Yes, for my film it was about, “This is about the black family in the South,” and I would say, “Look beyond race and look more at the socioeconomic aspect of the film.” This story in my film is really about being poor, uneducated, and in the South, and being stuck and in a cycle. That transcends race, gender, and age.

And yet, race matters…

DuVernay: What gets me is that so often the expression of the African-American experience that is acceptable and applauded by the industry is not coming from us. They are stories being told from the outside in. Interpretations of the black female experience, as opposed to reflection, are valid. All we are saying is our reflections are also valid. What our films have in common is they are showing reflections of who we are. They need to be just as valued, just as heard, just as critiqued and distributed as our white male counterparts’ interpretation of us. That is what the disconnect has been and the cinematic legacy on screen as black filmmakers has been. These films are set apart and there is not a balanced approached to their value.

Mahoney: One of the fascinating things about this year is that Ava wins the Sundance Best Director and what that means. If you talk to certain people in the industry, they will think another person had won. It is bizarre to watch and it makes my heart hurt. Why does that happen? Why wasn’t the film she offered up from her perspective as valuable as every other guy who has won Best Director at Sundance over the past years?

In Hollywood, there is a persistent belief that “black” films don’t resonate with audiences abroad. This makes the films less attractive to some producers and distributors because they rely so much on foreign sales.

Mahoney: We could write a book about all the sentences that we have been told: “Nobody wants to see this film. Nobody will pay to see this film. Nobody worldwide will pay to go see this film.” Well, one of my favorite stories is from Berlin when we had more than 2,000 kids there at a screening. And I had a moment [watching the audience] when that sentence ran through me, “Nobody wants to see this movie.” There was this girl that kept watching me and staring at me and following me after the screening. So I said to her, “Are you OK?” And she stares at me right in the eye and says, “How did you know?” And I said, “Excuse me?” And she says, “How did you know all that about me?” And we just stood there, and I hugged her. She believed with all her being that I had followed her and that my film had told her story. This is something that no number counter or pencil pusher in Hollywood can ever understand.

Mabry: We all see that when we travel with our films internationally. In this industry, they think our films won’t “cross over,” but if you have a human story and strong enough characters, people will connect on a human level. It is not all about race. I have personally seen it in Switzerland. People are connecting regardless of where they are from. They are saying, “That is my family,” and I was shocked because I didn’t know there was that much dysfunction in the world. We have all had that experience where you have people come up to you after a movie. That is the thing that makes it worth it, and it helps through all the hard times when you know that you are connecting with the audience. This is what it was for.

“The world wants to define me by my mammary glands and melanin,” said Victoria Mahoney.

Trying to get financing, getting distribution, and then marketing the film is a huge challenge.

Mabry: It can be frustrating and you have moments when you can get bitter, but when you screen it and you see the reception, that takes away the bitterness. I have gotten to a point in my career where I am not looking to be invited to the table. I am going to build my own table. Why wait around and hope that you will be accepted? What do you do—stop your career? Suppress your voice? Stop telling stories? No.

Mahoney: A lot of great, talented people have.

DuVernay: I feel that there is no gate that has been kept that I need to go through. I only say that because it is something that has freed me. I don’t even go to meetings. I do not go in and say, “Can you help me make this film?” I only go in if you are inviting me to tell me how you will help me make this film. It is a different posture—it is “I am making this thing. Do you want to help me make it?” If any of us try to wait for permission, it is not going to happen for us. But for better or worse, with the collapsing model of the industry, with the advent of social media and digital filmmaking, it is no longer a space where we have to sit back and wait to be heard. The compromise is recalibrating what we see as success. Is it enough to have that moment where you have reached this sister in Germany and go audience by audience and get love at the black film festivals and cultivate your audience as you go? Is it OK if you don’t win the awards or make it to a talk show or the cover of a magazine? Once we reconcile in ourselves that what we really want is to tell stories and to connect with an audience, that needs to be just as valuable to us. We need to stay focused on what matters.

Paxton: That is the legacy being black gives us. It was never going to be a journey in any field that looks like anyone else’s. Every field my family went in, the door was kicked in and they had to shape it the way that it worked for them.

So that connection with the audience has to be found.

Mabry: People are traveling to see Ava’s movie. I know someone who drove from Raleigh to Charlotte, a three-hour drive. With my film, I knew someone who drove from Atlanta to Savannah to see it again.

DuVernay: That is not uncommon. That is how starved people are…

Mabry: Exactly. That is what that tells us. There is a void in the market, and there is an audience out there.

Mahoney: Yes, through social media we can see our audience and they are saying, “We are hungry; can we see it please?” So we know how hungry they are. Also, a few years ago, I felt like I was alone. But now with the Internet and social media, how many people in the past months wrapped films? Dozens of people. I know people who are on their second films. There is strength in numbers, and we can beware the lies we are told.

DuVernay: It takes time to cultivate a market. The question is can we exist within this small niche? And there is a precedent like the Criterion brand. What we need are more people—Latino filmmakers, Asian filmmakers, LGBT filmmakers, everyone that is not in dominant culture. If we could all figure this out—everyone has the same problem—there has to be another route. We have enough talent, filmmakers, producers, and the audience exists. I believe that film will eventually start to reflect what we have seen in the election process. It is going to have to change, and the question is, will it change in time for our stories to be viable, or can we create some forward movement so that the next group of sisters that are sitting in this room are not having this conversation? Previous generations of black female filmmakers have opened up the space to say that black female images can be made and are viable. Now we just need to make it sustainable.

Paxton: Honestly, sitting at this table, I am so scared because I am one of those people that, up until four or five months ago, was on the verge of saying this might be too much of a cross for me to bear. I come from being an executive and having produced two films that had tiny audiences, and I saw how hard that was as a producer. Now the feature that I am trying to direct is a drama about a lonely black woman in New York who is obsessed with a violin and the metaphor for why she holds on to this inanimate object instead of reaching out for love with people. And as I listen to you guys now I think, “hmmm, am I sure?” I am hoping to find the strength in what you guys have done. As an executive [formerly with Forest Whitaker’s production company Spirit Dance], I have watched genres break, and you never have to have these conversations again. Teen horror broke and it was like, stop talking about teen horror not being a profitable genre. It is profitable. We are done with this conversation. Buddy comedies, done. At what moment do you say, “Dramas with black females that have broken through—bring them on?” When is that going to happen? When Forest [Whitaker] made Waiting to Exhale [in 1995] people said, “Aren’t we done with this conversation?”

 
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Posted by on December 4, 2012 in African American Films

 

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African Diaspora International Film Festival

28 Nov

Doctor Bello: Isaiah Washington and Genevieve Nnaji

The African Diaspora International Film Festival (ADIFF) which organizers say “presents an eclectic mix of urban, classic, independent and foreign films that depict the richness and diversity of the life experience of people of African descent and Indigenous people all over the world” opens this Friday in New York City with several films that will be shown over the week.

This year, the lineup is impressive.

“We are proud to announce that The Pirogue by Moussa Touré has won the Golden Tanit at the 2012 Carthage Film Festival,” says Diarah N’Daw-Spech who together with Reinaldo Barroso-Spech, are founders of the film festival, in a release promoting the festival.

“The Cartage Film Festival is held in Tunisia every two years. The Cartage Film Festival and FESPACO in Burkina Faso are the two most important film festivals on the African continent that showcase African and Afro-Centric theme films.”

La Pirogue will be screened on Friday, Nov. 30 at 6pm with short Swiss film Objection 6.  “With amazing camera work putting you in the shoes of the lead character, Objection 6  tells the story of a deportation that happened in March 2010, which ended with the tragic death of an asylum seeker,” N’Daw-Spech adds.

ADIFF is also extremely proud to announce that Doctor Bello by Tony Abulu continues to demonstrate at a global scale the talent and creativity of African filmmakers all over the world.

Doctor Bello, after opening the 20th African Diaspora Film Festival in New York, will be showcased in Lagos, Nigeria, London, UK and Johannesburg,South Africa.

Doctor Bello and The Pirogue will be part of a Special Presentation on Friday November 30 at the NYIT Auditorium located on 1871 Broadway and 61st Street in Manhattan.

Tickets $15 per film available here www.NYADIFF.org 

Tel: 212-864-1760

 
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Posted by on November 28, 2012 in African American Films

 

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Michael Clarke Duncan, 54, Dead from 2nd Heart Attack in 2 Months

04 Sep

Acclaimed black actor carried hit urban films and an Oscar-nominated picture

 

Michael Clarke Duncan, the unmistakable screen and voice actor in many hit urban and mainstream films, including an Oscar-nominated performance in “The Green Mile,” died Monday morning in Los Angeles, his fiancé, reality TV star Rev. Omarosa Manigault, said in a statement released by their publicist. Duncan, 54, suffered a fatal heart attack. The actor was hospitalized for another heart attack in mid-July and never fully recovered, according the statement. Duncan was best known to African American and wider audiences for his roles in “The Players Club,” “Planet of the Apes,” and “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.” Before turning to acting full-time, the muscular 6-foot-4 Duncan worked as a bodyguard for rapper Notorious B.I.G. and actors Will Smith and Jamie Foxx.

 
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Posted by on September 4, 2012 in African American and Entertainment, African American Films, Influential African Americans Who Passed Away

 

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Lorraine Hansberry Theatre hosts Opening Night, featuring Robert Townsend and his film ‘In the Hive’

13 Jun

Opening Night at the San Francisco Black Film Festival will kick off at the historic Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, 450 Post St., Union Square, Friday, June 15, with a 6 p.m. VIP Red Carpet Reception, 7 p.m. screening of Robert Townsend’s “In The Hive,” starring Loretta Devine, Michael Clarke Duncan, Vivica A. Fox and featuring newcomer Jonathan McDaniel, “a young Denzel,” along with a panel discussion and VIP Red Carpet Afterparty.

“Hollywood Renaissance Man” Robert Townsend, actor, comedian, producer, director, television executive, writer and humanitarian, takes director’s credit for “In The Hive.”

“In the Hive” director Robert Townsend is coming a day early, on Thursday, to promote his film, which opens the festival. Based on a true story, its universal theme is one person making a difference in the lives of many. Michael Clarke Duncan, Loretta Devine, Vivica A. Fox and newcomer Jonathan McDaniel headline the film that tells the story of how a cook in rural North Carolina changed the hopeless lives of young men discarded by society.

“We’re pleased to have Robert Townsend’s film that was produced in collaboration with One Economy as part of the our 14th festival,” said festival director Kali Oray. “It is a signature piece that leads what I am seeing as a redemptive theme, considering films like the international ‘Fambul Tok’ of Sierra Leone, which demonstrates forgiveness in its highest form, and Kevin Epps’ ‘FAM BAM,’ JR Valrey’s ‘Block Reportin’ 101’ and Jacquie Taliaferro’s ‘10-10 Gotta Win’ and other films. The San Francisco Black Film Festival, in alignment with our mission, provides a platform for established and emerging filmmakers,” added Oray.

“The San Francisco Black Film Festival organizers and volunteers see the festival as more than just entertainment,” said Rey Ramsey, co-founder and chairman of the board for One Economy, which has brought broadband access to over 300,000 low income Americans and is located on four continents. “We’re beginning a relationship that will launch on-going educational opportunities that include screenings and panel discussions beyond opening night. Most important is the message of the movie: ‘In the Hive’ is about real people and represents what’s happening every day around the country. Stay tuned for the additional educational programs in the upcoming months.”

SFBFF films

Some festival highlights include “In The Hive,” directed by Robert Townsend, a universal story of the triumph of the underdog when just one person decides there is a better way and that the weakest among us is noble and has great worth. Former De Young Museum Fellow Kevin Epps’ “FAM BAM” examines the Black family structure and its resilience. Jacquie Taliaferro’s “10-10 Gotta Win” showcases the importance of voting, and JR Valrey’s “Block Reportin’ 101” gives the 411 on the Block Report brand of journalism and how it serves people and communities that are often denied outlets elsewhere.

Actress Loretta Devine, right, portrays the real life heroic figure of “In the Hive,” Vivian Saunders, left.

“Fambul Tok” (“Family Talk”) by Sara Terry chronicles Sierra Leoneans drawing on ancient traditions of addressing issues within the safety of the family circle to make their communities whole again. “Elza” by Marriette Monpierre is the dramatic tale of a young Parisian woman of Caribbean descent who returns to her native island of Guadeloupe looking for the father she has never known.

For a list of other films and workshops on animation for youth 12-17 with special guest Leo Sullivan, Bill Cosby’s legendary cartoonist, visit http://www.sfbff.org/z2011-aftr-fest/2012-schedule-shell.html.

Celebrity sightings

The list of celebrities grows as the festival nears. Jonathan McDaniel of “In the Hive,” Bill Cosby’s legendary cartoonist Leo Sullivan, who created “Fat Albert and the Kids,” Morrie Turner, creator of syndicated comic strip “Wee Pals,” James Weston II, seen most recently in “Red Tails and Transformers,” Welterweight Champion of the World Karim “Hard Hitta” Mayfield, Romancing the Bass’ Tony Saunders, playing at the Hansberry June 22, Larry Batiste, pre-Grammy Awards music director, KMEL’s Lady Ray, Charleston Pierce, who’s lighting up the airwaves for Cadillac, Samm Styles, Warner Bros. director for “Black August,” Y’Anad Burrell, founder and creative director of “Fashion on the Square,” author Alonzo Tucker, Dr. Maxine Hickman, president of the San Francisco National Coalition of 100 Black Women are among those attending the Red Carpet VIP Reception and other events.

The late Ave Montague, founder of the San Francisco Black Film Festival. – Photo: SF Chronicle

Invited guests include Robert Townsend, Loretta Devine, Vivica A. Fox, Michael Clarke Duncan, Danny Glover, Carl Lumbly, Delroy Lindo, Jordin Sparks, Mike Epps, Shabaka Henley, Ted Lange, Michael Lange, Jerri Lange, Belva Davis, Barbara Rodgers, Clifford Brown Jr., Nikki Thomas, Steven Anthony Jones, Brenda Payton, San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

The San Francisco Black Film Festival is a platform for established and emerging artists that was founded by the late arts impresario Ave Montague. SFBFF continues since her death in 2009 under the leadership of her son, Kali Oray, and his wife, Katerra Crossley, with a team of volunteers and well-wishers who understand the arts are more than entertainment.

What about the San Francisco Black Film Festival?

We thank you for catching the vision to support the growing brand of the San Francisco Black Film Festival that is about more than entertainment. It’s about providing a cultural platform for exchange of ideas. It’s about commerce as people come into San Francisco for dinner before or after a film, use cabs, BART, Muni and stay in hotels.

Newcomer Jonathan McDaniel lights up the screen of “In the Hive” like a “young Denzel.”

It’s about creating synergy for volunteerism, job training and job development around the film industry and tangential industries. It’s about building on the legacy of founder Ave Montague for future generations. It’s about collaboration, as the San Francisco Black Film Festival partners with the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, Calvary Community Church, Wells Fargo Bank, PG&E, California Tobacco Free Project, Recology, Urban Game Suite, Rainbow Grocery Co-op, San Francisco Bay View newspaper, the Jazz Heritage Center, KPFA, KPOO, LaHitz Media, Bay Area Black Journalists Association, African American Arts and Culture Complex, Academy of Art University, One Economy Corp. and more. It’s about multiculturalism and it’s about you!

For more information, visit www.sfbff.org and listen to JR Valrey of BlockReportRadio.com interview SFBFF co-director Kali Oray:

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in African American and Entertainment, African American Films, African American News, Events

 

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The San Francisco Black Film Festival is back!

13 Jun

by Minister of Information JR

Summertime in the Bay Area is nothing without all of the music, food and film festivals. If you were under a rock in April, you missed the Oakland International Film Festival, but there is still time for you to catch the Bay’s biggest Black film festival, the San Francisco Black Film Festival, which runs June 15-17 at a number of theaters around San Francisco.

This year Leo Sullivan will be in attendance. He is one of the cartoon visionaries who created Fat Albert and Looney Tunes. Digital Underground will also be a part of this year’s festivities, as well as Black Panther Party co-founder and chairman Bobby Seale.

Some of the popular films at this year’s festival are “Block Reportin’ 101,” “Doin’ It in the Park,” “Oaktowne” and “Merritt College: Home of the Black Panthers.” “Block Reportin’ 101” features political rappers from the group dead prez and the mother of SFPD murder victim Kenneth Harding. The film critiques the tactics and strategy of the controversial radio show, The Block Report, in addressing the community’s issues outside of the box of “journalistic rules.”

“Doin’ It in the Park” is a film about the history of pickup basketball in New York and features basketball notables like Dr. J, Skip to My Lou, the Model and more. It also talks about the humble origins of basketball and games like “21” and “horse.”

“Oaktowne” is the first episode of a television series that looks at the complexities of life being Black in Oakland beyond the stereotypes. And “Merritt College: Home of the Black Panthers” is about the history of co-founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale and their lives as students prior to the international phenomenon that they created called the Black Panther Party. These are just a few of the movies; check the rest out at sfbff.org. Now let’s hear from Kali Oray, director of the San Francisco Black Film Fest …

M.O.I. JR: How was the SF Black Film Fest founded? When?

Kali: It was founded in 1988. This was the first year that the festival started screening movies and bringing them to the Bay Area. Its inception was years before, starting as a mail order for Black cinema. It may be hard to believe with the way media is so easily available today, but in the past, Black media was very hard to obtain unless it was at the top of the commercial food chain. Many movies and shows that you enjoyed as a child or that your mother and grandmother would have enjoyed, were all but impossible to get, if you did not have the resources.

Kali Oray, director of the San Francisco Black Film Festival

My mother had the resources and vision to compile these hard to find films and sell them through a mail order source called AVCHAR. later changed to AM VIDEOS. The natural progression was to screen some of these hard to find films at a festival, along with the star, and showcase independent Black media at the same time – and this vision birthed the San Francisco Black Film Festival.M.O.I. JR: What is the point of a Black film festival?

Kali: The point of the San Francisco Black Film Festival is to showcase independent Black films to the masses. We want to offer something different from the normal activities we see on the television and on movie screens. These roles are usually universal and follow the lame format we are used to: the tired scene of us singing and dancing, cooning, playing maids and slaves, or worse, dressing as a women for comic value.

If this is what you enjoy, then you do not have a problem finding this type of material. But if you enjoy positive roles, stories that uplift the Black race in America, and film that you may never see anywhere else, then this is the festival you should attend. We concentrate on breaking the mold in which African Americans and the diaspora are many times pigeon holed. This was my mother’s vision and this is the vision of the SFBFF for life – and that’s a mighty long time.

M.O.I. JR: Why did you end up taking over?

Kali: Taking over the film festival is a conversation that my mother and I would discuss from time to time. I was in Atlanta going to college before the film festival was started. I had my second child in 1996 and two years later the film festival started. By this time I was on a schedule of going to work and taking care of the household … life. I would fly down for the film festival and help out where needed as she got the festival off the ground.

She was so resourceful that many would not even know that she pulled it off with $3,000 and a lot of favors. Later she suffered a stroke and my suggestion was not to do the film festival that year and take time to get herself back. Her motivation was the film festival and she was back to 90 percent by the opening night. This was a passion that she cared deeply about and this is something that I truly got the bug for after this happened.

The beautiful and celebrated Lorraine Hansberry Theatre hosts opening night. Be there!

Later the conversations were about me moving back to San Francisco or her moving to Atlanta and bringing the film festival there. It was something that was discussed, but I believe we both thought that we had plenty of time. Then four days after Barack Obama gets elected, my mother leaves this place … another scene.My phone rings and within 10 seconds I had been given the news about my mother’s passing. It took the life out of me and all I could do was go home and cry and meditate. It was as though the world had stopped moving, and I was in a stupor. Without even thinking about what I was going to do, I left on a plane back to my hometown, San Francisco.

Once I got home and started going through the paperwork and packing items to move back to Atlanta, I could not help but to realize that the film festival needed to continue and, more than that, it needed to remain in San Francisco where the Black population was between 5-6 percent. This is from what at one time was 30 percent. If anyone needed a positive festival that dispelled negative stereotypes, it was San Francisco and there is no way that this festival should ever leave the Bay Area.

M.O.I. JR: What are some of the films that you are excited about? Why?

Kali: I am excited about too many films to explain them all so I will tell you about films that I personally enjoyed. The first is a film called “Fambul Tok” (“Family Talk”), which is by far the most powerful documentary I have seen in a decade. Victims and perpetrators of Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war come together for the first time in an unprecedented program of tradition-based truth-telling and forgiveness ceremonies.

“Fambul Tok” (“Family Talk”) from Sierra Leone is an outstanding film.

Through reviving their ancient practice of fambul tok (family talk), Sierra Leoneans are building sustainable peace at the grass-roots level – succeeding where the international community’s post-conflict efforts failed. Filled with lessons for the West, this film explores the depths of a culture that believes that true justice lies in redemption and healing for individuals – and that forgiveness is the surest path to restoring dignity and building strong communities. This is a film about forgiveness and understanding that the whole world needs to see.Another great film that I enjoyed was “Doin’ It in the Park: Pickup Basketball, NYC.” This was a very in-depth archiving and history of the pickup basketball greats. “Doin’ It in the Park: Pickup Basketball, NYC” explores the definition, history, culture and social impact of New York’s summer b-ball scene, widely recognized as the worldwide “Mecca” of the sport.

In New York City, pickup basketball is not just a sport. It is a way of life. There are 700-plus outdoor courts and an estimated 500,000 players. The most loyal approach the game as a religion and the playground as their church.

“An Oversimplification of Her Beauty” – this is a film that I fell in love with. I watched it for the first time and thought it was “cool” but when I had to watch it again, while working with the volume down low, is where the love became official. It is visually stunning! This first time filmmaker poured all of his talent into this film. It is a film that can watch you and there is something new every time it does.

“You’ve just arrived home after a bad day. You’re broke and lonely, even though you live in the biggest and busiest city in America. You do, however, have one cause for mild optimism: You seem to have captured the attention of an intriguing young lady. You’ve rushed home to clean your apartment before she comes over. In your haste, you see that you’ve missed a call. There’s a voice mail; she tells you that she won’t be seeing you tonight.”

A scene from “The Custom Mary”

With arresting insight, vulnerability and a delightful sense of humor, Terence Nance’s explosively creative debut feature, “An Oversimplification of Her Beauty,” documents the relationship between Terence and a lovely young woman (Namik Minter) as it teeters on the divide between platonic and romantic. Utilizing a tapestry of live action and various styles of animation, Terence explores the fantasies, emotions and memories that race through his mind during a singular moment in time.There are many other films that I enjoyed, but I will share those three. We also have student films, shorts, docs, animation, music videos and some new media being offered. Richard Roundtree, Samuel L. Jackson, Whoopi Goldberg and many other stars will bless us in the movies that they are a part of. If I were you, I would break from the norm and support the SFBFF!

M.O.I. JR: Where in San Francisco will the festival be? What activities other than screenings are connected to this year’s San Francisco Black Film Fest?

Kali: The venues for this year are the Lorraine Hansberry Theater on Union Square, The Roxie on Valencia, the AAACC’s Buriel Clay Theater and the Jazz Heritage Center’s Media and Education Theater on Fillmore.

Leo Sullivan, legendary cartoon visionary, will present a series of workshops in animation and gaming for youngsters age 12-17.

We will have pre- and post-events. We will also be doing an Urban Games Suite and screening “A Great Day in Gaming,” the story of Gerald A. Lawson (better Google or Bing that!). We will also be bringing down Leo Sullivan – animator, layout artist, studio manager – to talk about the industry and how we as African Americans can get involved. His credits include “Fat Albert,” “The Hulk,” “Fantastic Four” and he is the creator of the “Tuskegee Red Tails” app. We will have female game coders, and this will be a great opportunity to network and get your foot in the door.M.O.I. JR: How’d you feel about the recent Oakland International Film Fest, which you attended?

Kali: I did go to the OIFF and love what David is doing. David is a good guy and many do not realize how much of himself he has to give to bring an annual festival to Oakland. David is someone I will always support and I love his stance on sustainable food and the programming he does for the OIFF.

M.O.I. JR: Where can people buy tickets and get more information for the San Francisco Black Film Festival?

Kali: Tickets will go on sale at the beginning of the month on the website. You can get all the information as it becomes available by joining the newsletter at www.sfbff.org. The phone number is (415) 400-4602.

The People’s Minister of Information JR is associate editor of the Bay View, author of “Block Reportin’” and filmmaker of “Operation Small Axe” and “Block Reportin’ 101,” available, along with many more interviews, atwww.blockreportradio.com. He also hosts two weekly shows on KPFA 94.1 FM and kpfa.org: The Morning Mix every Wednesday, 8-9 a.m., and The Block Report every Friday night-Saturday morning, midnight-2 a.m. He can be reached at blockreportradio@gmail.com.

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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in African American Films, African American News

 

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Conversation with international film director Jean Pierre Bekolo

05 Jun

by Jackie Wright

Filmmaker Jean Pierre Bekolo and reporter Jackie Wright are pictured in the lobby of Dallas’ Adolphus Hotel, site of the 38th African Literature Association Conference.

In the midst of the Dallas Film Society’s International Film Festival in April, Southern Methodist University hosted the 38th African Literature Association Conference that feted celebrated international film director Jean Pierre Bekolo. Inspired by Spike Lee, Bekolo says Lee “gave me the vision that I could do this thing, that I could film from the perspective of Africa.”The 20th anniversary of Bekolo’s groundbreaking “Quartier Mozart,” observed during the conference at the historic Aldolphus Hotel in Dallas, included a screening of the film at the Hughes-Triggs Theater at the Southern Methodist University campus.

Bekolo was headlined along with the highly respected Ama Ata Aidoo, a prolific writer from Ghana. The conference was also the occasion of Aidoo’s 70th birthday and her new book, “Diplomatic Pounds and Other Stories,” was launched.

Professor Dayna Oscherwitz and Professor Herve Tchumkam convened the ALA conference. Other speakers included Fabien Eboussi Boulaga, Charles Cantalupo, Pius Adesanmi, Zaynab Alkali and Mshai Mwangola. African Heritage Press, the African Books Collective and Africa World Press sponsored the conference.

As I interviewed Bekolo over lunch at La Fiorentina near the SMU campus, he immediately began talking about the creative process and the need to “write from a place and not for an audience.” “If you write from a place, you are more likely to speak truth than if you write for an audience because you can be easily manipulated by the expectations of the audience,” he said eloquently with a French accent.

There we were tête-à-tête and his interest in truth and speaking truth to power pulled from me several revelations. It was as if I had walked into the confession chamber of a priest who looked at me soul to soul, eye to eye. I was interviewing him for LaHitz Media’s Jacquie Taliaferro, a Cannes International Film Festival comrade he’s known since his film was honored there in 1992; but the director in him was calling to the latent, long-buried University of Georgia Drama Department-trained actor in me.

As Africa via Europe loomed heavy in the conversation, I finally confessed to someone. I confessed to the African director, priest of sorts, that for years I had no interest in visiting Africa. I would tense up and try not to roll my eyes when the converted would swoon about going to the Motherland. To keep from having “knockdown-drag out” fights, I would keep my lips sealed ever so tightly.

“Over the past few years, my heart has been softening because I understand why I had this deep-seated disdain for kissing the holy Motherland ground no matter how many epiphanies returning people shared. Bekolo, this is it for me: No one goes and takes what is precious to you without a fight. Africans helped the ‘White Man’ take my people from Africa, number one, and, number two, no one came after us,” I said with cold intellectual composure looking him straight in the eyes.

Inside, I wanted to “hollah” as in “throw up both my hands,” but it was not the time nor place; I didn’t care how probing yet compassionate this African priest’s eyes were. So the silence sat in the air and then he spoke with an idea for resolution, if not restitution.

“You know, I have a friend in Cameroon who is giving away land to African Americans and will be performing a naming rite ceremony in December,” he replied directly as if to say, “Here, Jackie, now feel better, no? Yes!”

“Interesting,” was my response, not wanting to be too eager to accept the psychological olive branch and trying to resist yet another stone from being chiseled from my “I’m-not-interested-in-going-to-Africa wall.”

“You should come to Cameroon,” he said fervently!

“Why should anyone come to Cameroon?” I am asking as a journalist, not being flippant. “Why should anyone come to Cameroon,” I strongly replied.

“Everything began in Cameroon,” he laughs. “At least that is our myth.” “Even Obama.” “Obama is a Cameroonian name. Cameroonians migrated to Kenya and the name comes from our country. I will show you. Look at my passport, you will see my name, he exclaimed. There it was on his passport “Bekolo Obama.”

“Ok, what else,” I asked.

“Take a look at the film I made for the Cameroon Department of Tourism.” In a series of video clips, “A Continent Called Cameroon,” Bekolo uses the a cappella voice of a singer calling to would-be visitors as the visual elements of earth, wind, sky and water join in chorus to give the message: “Cameroon, All Africa in a Country.” The imagery is in harmony with the words from the Cameroon National Anthem: “Land of promise, land of glory, thou of life and joy, our only store!”

“You were here in Dallas for the 20th anniversary of your film, what are you working on now?”

“I am doing more writing now. Films are so expensive to make and I am feeling the urgency to make changes now through the power of art. I just wrote a piece about President Paul Biya and it is causing quite a stir.”

“Don’t tell me I should be afraid that your country’s secret service is going break up this lunch and take us away,” I said, laughing, scanning the room, yet still thinking in this not-so-free world, in this post-Patriot-Act-in-America world, in a world where it was acceptable for the first Black president of the free world to have a subordinate governor wag a disrespecting chiding finger in his face, my levity could have easily turned into a point of true concern. Will Smith and Regina King in “Enemy of the State” came to mind.

After my laughter, in answer to my real question, he responded: “Yes, you can read it. It is on the Internet. I said what some would consider some very hard words, but I framed my concerns from the perspective of a marriage. Our president was betrothed to Cameroon with great love and passion, yet over the years the fire has died. He spends more time in Switzerland than in Cameroon. What is he – too good for us now?”

“So your political essay has President Biya in the role of the adulterous husband who took the best years of his young wife but now is enthralled with a younger woman; is that your point?” I responded.

“Yes, you understand. It takes us forever to greet each other and say goodbye to give you a picture of our culture. And with all the time expended with these niceties we extend to each other, foreigners are coming in and taking away our resources, and our government is helping give away the country. So, given our culture, my words expressed in this metaphor – and that I believe should be stronger – have offended some people.”

The core of the creative process came full circle in our conversation. “Although you don’t write for an audience – you write from a place – you have to take into consideration whether you can be understood and received,” Bekolo instructed.

“Like Jesus said, ‘You can’t put new wine in old wine skins,’” I responded. “You have to have a thing or vehicle people understand, and you communicate from that point. Is that what you are saying?”

“Yes, that is why I used the metaphor of a marriage, so people could absorb the idea to grapple with the fact that this man, who is in his 80s, has been wrong for Cameroon for too many years. It is time for change,” Bekolo strongly expressed with a surge of vocal enthusiasm as I looked around the restaurant for the Cameroonian government agents.

Bekolo’s “Lettre à Paul Biya” is posted on Cameroon-info.net, at http://www.cameroon-info.net/stories/0,33882,@,jean-pierre-bekolo-lettre-a-paul-biya-nous-camerounais-si-nuls-et-que-vous-presi.html.

When Bekolo described the vestiges of colonialism that still remain – how, as an example, the Free Masons were sold as an organization that up and coming men had to join, yet at the top of the pyramid in Cameroon sits a White man who has no power but what was given to him by the Cameroonians – and how subservient Cameroonians are the ones who are chosen for positions of power to keep the masses under control while White men overtly or covertly rule, I thought of my conversations with filmmaking comrade Taliaferro. His description of Cameroon could be the flip side of a dime for Blacks in America on so many levels, from nonprofits to government to corporate America. There are glimpses of the mirage of Black Power while major control is still in the hands of White America.

So what’s the solution? Morality and truth through media, he said in so many words. We must create our films and our media from our worldview and stop trying to fit into the European paradigm to be accepted by them or approved by them, he passionately stated. Bekolo reminded me of the Book of Daniel.

Daniel, when encompassed by an alien culture, having been stolen from his homeland and forced to accept the ways of the oppressing culture, he stayed true to his beliefs. Daniel refused the food and trinkets of the Babylonian culture, yet rose to great stature and leadership – and he shared that leadership with Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah.

Most recognize his “true to our native land” comrades as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Daniel, although first to gain recognition and power, did not succumb to the temptation of remaining the “first and only.” He made a way for others, a trait that raises a people and opposes the ease and comfort of the “first and only” philosophy that keeps an oppressed people oppressed.

Bekolo, who spoke of returning the “old ways” of Cameroon, said he is looking for opportunities to join with other like-minded people to establish a new paradigm for Africa that is based on morality and truth. He ended our conversation with a call for freedom and unity in carving a brave new world through all media for humanitarian purposes without regard to race and class.

Conversation with Bekolo was stimulated in part by the environment in which we found ourselves. Chosen by chance as I drove in Dallas, a town we both had no familiarity with, in a quick glance we chose to stop in, of all places, La Fiorentina, a Tuscan style restaurant that I now find, days after recapping our talk, is located in an iconic church that dates back to the 1800s.

Jackie Wright is the president of Wright Enterprises, a full service public relations firm serving the corporate, non-profit and government sectors. A seasoned media and public relations professional, Wright has 20 years of media experience, including more than a decade of award-winning journalism experience in radio, television and print communications, and holds degrees in both journalism and drama from the University of Georgia. She can be reached at jackiewright@wrightnow.biz or twitter.com/wrightenternow.

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Posted by on June 5, 2012 in African American and Entertainment, African American Films, African American News, African Diaspora News

 

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