Spring in Seattle: Balmy and mild climate, abundant blooms on flowering trees and shrubs, and the annual Langston Hughes African American Film Festival.
The LHAAFF provides provocative films from independent Black filmmakers and works about the African American experience. The festival features panel discussions, screenplay readings, matinee screenings for middle and high school youth and in-depth chats with filmmakers, industry professionals and local community leaders.
Click here to see the film schedule and purchase tickets
Denzel Washington and Viola Davis to Star on Broadway
Denzel Washington and Viola Davis are heading back to the stage where they will star in the Broadway revival of Fences.
Washington will portray the role of Troy Maxson, a middle-aged sanitation worker and sharecropper’s son living in 1950s Pittsburgh. Davis will play his steadfast wife, Rose.
The 13-week limited engagement will play the Cort Theatre, with previews beginning April 14, and an opening set for April 26. Kenny Leon will direct the production.
17th Annual New York African Film Festival, April 7th to May 31st
New York City — The place to celebrate! The NYAFF kicks off their 17th annual festival today!
The New York African Film Festival (NYAFF) was established in 1993 with our festival co-organizer, the Film Society of Lincoln Center. This flagship program of screenings and panel discussions was presented bi-annually until 1998 and is now an annual spring event. Screenings feature critically acclaimed releases of feature- and short-format works by African directors of the global diaspora and their counterparts. The New York African Film Festival is presented annually at the Walter Reade Theater by African Film Festival, Inc. and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Subsequent screenings are held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and additional venues throughout New York City.
Click here for more information on the festival, venues, and times.
Maine African Film Festival, April 6-10, 2010
The Maine African Film Festival is a program of the African Cultural Foundation, a non-profit organization promoting cross-cultural literacy, communication, appreciation and understanding between people of post-colonial African culture and the non-African public.
The festivities began last night, but you will be able to see films until Saturday night. The festival ends with a closing part with Rich Medina & Lemi Ghariokwu at the Empire Dine and Dance
Don’t forget to register for the MAFF closing night Party, Funk ‘N Jump, at the Empire Dine and Dance!
Cherif Keita: New Documentary
Malian-born American filmmaker Chérif Keita announced in February 2010 during a visit to Durban that he is working on a sequel to his debut documentary, Oberlin-Inanda: The Life And Times Of John L Dube.
A trilogy in process, Keita takes us through a historical account of Dube, the founder of the Ohlange Institute near Verulam, the first editor of the Ilanga Lase Natal, the isiZulu newspaper, and the first president of the Native Congress, forerunner to the African National Congress.
Keita’s first documentary, Oberlin-Inanda: The life and Times of John L. Dube, details the the life of South Africa’s pioneer educator, entrepreneur, and politician John L. Dube.
His second documentary, Cemetery Stories: A Rebel Missionary in South Africa, links 19th-century American missionaries William and Ida Belle Wilcox to John Langalibalele Dube, and reveals how the missionaries’ friendship and mentorship of Dube helped the black teacher and clergyman on his path to success.
The final documentary will feature the support Dube received from the missionary couple, the Rev William Wilcox and his wife Ida Belle, and Mahatma Gandhi, who was his neighbour at the Phoenix Settlement in Inanda, outside Durban,
Keita states, “In my continuing journey into this fascinating story of humanity, I will be straddling three continents, Africa, America and India, to bring home the unpublished chapters of Dube’s relationship and friendship with the Wilcoxes and Gandhi during this defining period in his life.”
The third documentary will be produced by 2012.
For more information on Cherif Keita’s documentaries, click here.
Click here for information on the William and Ida Belle Wilcox
Click here for information on Keita’s second documentary of the trilogy
New Films for April 2010
Here is a list of some films that include Africans or African-Americans as subject matter, part of the cast, or part of the filming crew for April 2010:
April 2nd
- Clash of the Titans
- Why Did I Get Married Too?
9th
- La Mission
- The Human Experience
- Breaking Upwards
- Date Night
16th
- The Cartel
- Death at a Funeral
- Baby(ies)
- Death at a Funeral
23rd
- The Losers
- Let It Rain
- The Back-Up Plan
24th
- Vanilla Gorilla
"France Noire/Black France" Film Festival, May 21-23, 2010
The “France Noire/Black France” Film Festival is a showcase for films that focus on the historical and contemporary experiences of people of African descent in French society. The festival seeks to bring into sharp visual relief the differing representations and lived realities of those who identify themselves and are identified as “Les Noirs de et en France.” It also aims to promote and draw necessary light to a hugely important, though largely under-exposed, cinematic genre that focuses broadly on “Blacks” in France and the shifting cultural and social terrain that they have shaped in the métropole and territories identified and/or understood as “France.”
The festival will take placy May 21 – 23, 2010 at the Forum des Images in Paris.
Co-organizers: Arlette Frund (Université de Tours), Trica Danielle Keaton (Vanderbilt University),Tracy Sharpley-Whiting (Vanderbilt University), Maboula Soumahoro (Université de Tours), and the celebrated filmmaker, Euzhan Palcy, as the honored guest.
Click here for more information onFrance Noire/Black France Film Festival
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: International Black Women's Film Festival
2010 Call for Film Submissions
No Submission Fee If Postmarked by May 17, 2010
The IBWFF accepts all categories, including, shorts, features, documentaries, experimental, music video,
digital media, online films and animation. All genres are accepted, except for explicit adult film/video.
Registration is available online or offline, but online submissions are strongly encouraged.
The International Black Women’s Film Festival was established in 2002 by San Francisco-native Adrienne M. Anderson. With the assistance of volunteers and advisors, she found and served as curator of a festival where the accomplishments, talents, creativity and filmmaking skills of Black women could be celebrated, featured and fairly represented.
To date, the festival has received over 400 entries and has garnered international attention around the world including the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Caribbean, Brazil, Paris, Ghana, Canada and Australia!
Click here to find more information about the IBWFF
And click here to find requirements for films and filmmakers…
…and click here for the IBWFF registration form
…and, finally, here for FAQs
Thanks for another great symposium!
The Black Film Center/Archive would like to thank everyone who came to take part in the celebration of the films Nothing But a Man and The Spook Who Sat by the Door. We were delighted to be able to meet Sam Greenlee (author of the novel, The Spook Who Sat by the Door) and Bob Young (producer and writer of Nothing But a Man).
We would also like to thank our scholars: Terri Francis (Yale University), Khalil Muhammad (Indiana University), Devorah Heitner (Lake Forest College), Karen Bowdre (Indiana University), Marilyn Yaquinto (Truman State University), Frederick McElroy (Indiana University), and Lamont Yeakey (California State University, Los Angeles). Without these scholars and our moderators, David Wall and Michael T. Martin, we would not have had such rich, interesting, and (at times) heated discussions about these two films.
Fondly Do We Hope… Fervently Do We Pray — Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company
I (I meaning Leslie Houin, intern at the Black Film Center/Archive who manages this blog) saw the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company’s wonderful performance Fondly Do We Hope… Fervently Do We Pray in February at the Indiana University Auditorium. I would like to encourage others to see a performance of Fondly Do We Hope. The dance revolves around a central query: who was Abraham Lincoln? By mixing historical research with creative motion and sound, Bill takes us on a ride through our past and arrives at our future in terms of how we, Americans and people throughout the world, feel and think about President Lincoln. Fondly Do We Hope is breathtakingly beautiful and inspiring. Its set design, music, and choreography put me in awe.
Fondly Do We Hope will be performed in various locations in Hungary, Israel, Italy, France, and the United States until February 2011.
For more information on the dance, click here.
Click here to purchase tickets.
Also, the BFC/A has a film about the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in the archive.