Established in 1992, The Pan African Film Festival (PAFF) is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the promotion of cultural and racial tolerance and understanding through the exhibition of film, art and creative expression.
It is PAFF’s goal to present and showcase the broad spectrum of Black creative works, particularly those that reinforce positive images and help to destroy negative stereotypes. We believe film and art can lead to better understanding and foster communication between peoples of diverse cultures, races, and lifestyles, while at the same time, serve as a vehicle to initiate dialogue on the important issues of our times.
Black Film Center/Archive Film Screening, January 17th
The Black Film Center/Archive will be hosting a special screening of the documentary Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin on Monday January 17 at 3 pm.
The screening is part of the IU-Bloomington campus celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr Day. There will be a panel discussion after the film.
The screening will take place in the Wells Library Room 044B.
Museum of the Moving Image Reopens January 15th!
On January 15, Museum of the Moving Image will reopen, after a major expansion and renovation of its building.
As a vital part of its programming, the Museum will present a special screening of King: A Filmed Record … Montgomery to Memphis on January, 17th, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. This award-winning documentary was originally intended to be screened only once, on March 24, 1970, in select theaters.
For this special event Richard Kaplan, the film’s associate producer will introduce the film, and the Museum will offer free admission (seats are on a first-come, first-serve basis).
The Museum also includes an impressive array of film screenings and events scheduled this year, including live events with Diahann Caroll & Herbert Schlosser on February 10th and Bill Cosby on February 15th.
Red/Black: The Eiteljorg Museum Looks at Links between African and Native Americans
Red/Black: Related Through History tells stories of the allied and adversarial relationships of African and Native Americans.
A groundbreaking exhibition exploring the shared history between African and Native Americans will open at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art on Feb. 12, 2011. Red/Black: Related Through History includes an object-based exhibition on the subject, created by the Eiteljorg Museum, and the Smithsonian’s traveling panel show, IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas.
Since the first arrival of African slaves in North America, the interactions between people of African and Native American heritage has been a combined story of conflict, cooperation, cultural growth, destruction and survival. Since 2001, the Eiteljorg Museum has pioneered research on this subject and has drawn together important art and artifacts that demonstrate shared traditions found in history, genealogy, food, dress, music and occupation. Some American Indians held black slaves and others helped them escape. Sometimes there was intermarriage and a blending of traditions.
The exhibition will explore the stories of individuals and groups that highlight the allied and adversarial relationship between blacks and American Indians. One such story talks about the life of Lucinda Davis. She was interviewed by historians in the 1930s. Davis had been born a slave around 1848 and was owned by a Creek Indian family. She spent her life in what is now Oklahoma. She spoke the Creek language, and after gaining her emancipation following the Civil War, had difficulty adapting to freedom. There were many who, like Davis, were owned by Native Americans and who struggled with emancipation.
Also found in the exhibit is the story of Charlie Grant. In 1901, Baltimore Orioles manager John J. McGraw tested the color line by trying to pass off Grant, a Negro League second baseman, who had high cheekbones and straight hair, as Charlie Tokohama, a Native American.
Red/Blackalso explores issues of race and personal identity and the question: “Who am I and who gets to say so?” The exhibit will illustrate the complexity of racial identity and why judgments about race can so easily be misguided.
Red/Black runs through Aug. 9 and is presented by Eli Lilly and Co. with support from The Capital Group Companies, the home of American Funds.
IndiVisible was produced by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. It was made possible in part thanks to the generous support of the Akaloa Resource Foundation and the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center.
Building a Festival Network of African and African Diasporic Films
Ava DuVernay, the filmmaker and publicist, imagines a time when black-theme pictures will flourish in places where African-American film festivals have already found eager viewers. Fifty such cities would be an ideal black-film circuit, Ms. DuVernay said. In March she will start with five.
01/07/11 – The New York Times
Click here to read the entire article.
Haiti Film Festival, Bloomington, Indiana: January 23, 2011
A new film festival that focuses on the ongoing social and economic needs of people in Haiti is scheduled for 1-7:30 p.m. on Jan. 23 at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater. The Haiti Film Festival is presented by Indiana University’s Latino Cultural Center (La Casa) and the community group Bloomington for Haiti.
The Haiti Film Festival will open with “Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, Pillars of the Global Economy,” written and narrated by Edwidge Danticat (1:30 p.m., 50 minutes, 2009). Renée Bergan, the film’s director-producer, will lead discussion after the screening.
The festival will commemorate the anniversary of the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and other communities in Haiti, leaving 1.5 million people homeless.
Bloomington’s first Haiti Film Festival is a joint project between Kat Forgacs, an IU graduate student in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology and founder of Bloomington for Haiti, and Lillian Casillas, director of La Casa.
“This film festival is a great way to continue to educate and bring awareness on what is happening in Haiti,” Casillas said. “People quickly forget or move on to other topics, but we need to keep Haiti in the forefront of their consciousness.”
“I wanted to offer a good balance between social justice and post-earthquake films,” Forgacs said about the festival selections. “There are so many important issues going on at once. We don’t want to overlook the earthquake or neglect the advocacy needs that existed before the earthquake magnified those problems.”
Forgacs said she and Casillas also wish to present a version of Haiti that isn’t all dire. “There are so many beautiful things that can coexist with tragedy,” Forgacs said. “It’s good to show a balanced portrait of people’s daily lives, and I think several of our films provide that human understanding.”
The Haiti Film Festival will feature three independent documentaries, including one by an IU alumnus, and a selection of short films from students of the Ciné Institute, Haiti’s only scholarship-based professional film school. Directors from the films will be present for Q-and-A sessions. During the festival, Indiana-based organizations will staff booths providing information about their service work in Haiti before and since the earthquake.
Desert Flower to Debut in U.S. Theaters
Desert Flower staring model Liya Kebede and actor Anthony Mackie will be released in theaters in the United States in early 2011. In 2009 the film went overseas and made its’ round in the film festival circuit.
Desert Flower, directed by Sherry Horman, tells the story of Waris Dirie (Kebede), who escaped Somalia at 13 and spent her adolescence as a maid in her country’s London embassy. A regime change forces her onto the streets of London, but she is discovered by a famous fashion photographer, and this scared, homeless runaway evolves into a glamorous runway superstar.
Sally Hawkins, Juliet Stevenson and Timothy Spall also star in the real life Cinderella-like movie.
Desert Flowers will be released in the theaters through National Geographic Cinema Ventures.
Check out the trailer below:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqYZhz57kEM]
January 10 – LA PALABRA EN EL BOSQUE @ IU Cinema
IU History professor Jeffrey Gould will present the documentary, La Palabra en el Bosque (The Word in the Woods), at the IU Cinema on January 10 at 7 pm.
San Diego Black Film Festival: January 27-30, 2011
The San Diego Black Film Festival was established in 2003 and is hosted each year by the San Diego Black Film Foundation, a nonprofit 501(c) organization. The San Diego Black Film Foundation is dedicated to the preservation and promotion of African American cinema as well as the education of media arts. The event is one of the largest black film festivals in the country and is held each year in late January.
Click here for more information on this film festival.
The Tempest: An Interview with Djimon Housou by Wilson Morales
Wilson Morales: How exciting and hard was it to do a Shakespeare film?
Djimon Hounsou: Well, you can imagine. I guess that people who are born with the English language being their first have a difficult time with it. So you can imagine me after five languages, this is like a foreign language all together. It was fun and definitely challenging and it was very difficult to get around words and then you also had to worry about the makeup, the four or five hours of makeup on a daily basis. That was a lot, too.
Click here to read the entire interview.