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By Indie Means Necessary

The BlackStar Film Festival is an annual celebration of the visual and storytelling traditions of the African diaspora and of global indigenous communities, showcasing films by black people from around the world.

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RT @HBR_Media: Brown Paper Dolls Team Up With Issa Rae Presents for ‘Milk + Honey’ Webseries! Catch the first episode now! https://t.co/DWC…

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RT @pchh: How being a writer, a producer, & an actor has made @LenaWaithe more well-rounded as an artist. https://t.co/Z6CKuUmfrr https://t…

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  • This year we'll be screening 60 films! The theme of this year’s festival is Resistance, examining political and social uprisings around the world and in the U.S., from the upheaval of the 1960s to the Los Angeles riots in the 1990s to the uprising in Ferguson and the current moment of unrest. New this year will be an exhibit curated by our Producing Artistic Director, @karmaori entitled "Lossless," which will be on view @lpgallery. The exhibit is an exploration of the Black body as a site of compression; it considers the ways that labor, illusion, loss, lineage, and personhood are imagined and reconstructed. 📽 🎞 We have a lot of great events, so grab your all-access pass (at 20% off until June 30) at the link in our bio ➡️ @blackstarfest Pass holder benefits include priority seating at all screenings and priority entry to all parties, panels, and workshops. Visit blackstarfest.org for all event info! . . . #byindiemeansnecessary #bsff17 #indiefilmfestival #indiemovies #philly #whyilovephilly #phillyevents #filmmakers
  • Believe it or not, Mahershala is a nickname. His given name is Mahershalalhashbaz, which also, believe it or not, is not a Muslim name but a Hebrew one. It is the longest name in the Old Testament, belonging to the second prophetic son of Isaiah, and it means “Hurry to the spoils!” or, in other words, “Look at all this good shit here!” He converted to Islam in 1999, after attending a mosque with his future wife. His faith, he says, has helped him become a better actor: “It benefits me from the standpoint of really creating empathy for these characters that I try to embody, other human beings with issues as deep and personal as my own. Because of Islam, I am acutely aware that I am a work in progress.” The daily practice of the religion, he says, “puts a healthy pressure on you to be your best self, beginning with your own spirit and how that feeds into your actions.” #mahershalaali #gq . . Source: @gq 📷: Peggy Sirota
  • #QueenSugar season 2 premiers tonight! This season once again features all female directors including Cheryl Dunye, DeMane Davis and #JulieDash. Dunye was recently invited to join the academy, she wrote, directed and starred in the “The Watermelon Woman” (1996), a pioneering exploration of black women and lesbian identity in film, and the HBO movie “Stranger Inside” (2001), set in a women’s prison. Davis co-directed “Black & White & Red All Over,” which screened at Sundance in 1997. Her feature “Lift,” starring a then-unknown actress named Kerry Washington as a professional shoplifter, played there in 2001. During a panel at the Produced By Conference, #AvaDuvernay said she was shocked to learn that many of her black female friends were struggling to break into television, even though they had directed feature films. “It’s just that first episode of television. Once you have it, it really opens up,” DuVernay said during the panel. She then added, "The culture of OWN and Queen Sugar and Wrinkle is to be inclusive. The culture of so many other things is not to be.” Though DuVernay was directing the feature film “A Wrinkle in Time,” she was still very much a part of “Queen Sugar.” She explained, “I approved scripts and casting. I got involved in the editing, and I got final edit on the episodes.” . . @refinery29 @latimes
  • #Juneteenth, is one of the most important events in our nation’s history. On “Freedom’s Eve” or the eve of January 1, 1863 the first Watch Night services took place. On that night, enslaved and free African Americans gathered in churches and private homes all across the country awaiting news that the Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect. Even though the Emancipation Proclamation was made effective in 1863, it could not be implemented in places still under Confederate control. This meant that in the westernmost Confederate state of Texas, enslaved people would not be free until much later. On June 19, 1865 that changed, when enslaved African Americans in Galveston Bay, TX were notified by the arrival of some 2,000 Union troops that they, along with the more than 250,000 other enslaved black people in the state, were free by executive decree. #Juneteenth honors the 3,400 slaves who escaped slavery in Virginia and Maryland during the War of 1812 to join the British forces anchored in the Chesapeake. Juneteenth is for the slave rebels aboard the San Juan Nepomuceno, who broke free of their bonds in the south Atlantic and successfully forced the ship to take them back to Africa—"perhaps the greatest escape in the history of New World slavery," according to historian Greg Grandin. Juneteenth is for the slaves who answered colonial Governor Lord Dunmore's 1775 promise of emancipation by fleeing their masters and fighting on the side of the British crown against the colonists in the War of Independence—an exodus of between 5,000 and 100,000 African Americans, according to historian Alan Gilbert. The post-emancipation period known as Reconstruction (1865-1877) marked an era of great hope, uncertainty, and struggle for the nation as a whole. Formerly enslaved people immediately sought to reunify families, establish schools, run for political office, push radical legislation and even sue slaveholders for compensation. . . Source: @vice @nmaahc
  • Today would have been #Tupac's 46th birthday. He made his acting debut as Bishop in "Juice," and as part of the 25th anniversary of the movie's debut it was remastered and released on commemorative Bluray and in HD for streaming; extra features include an alternate ending. Tupac, who tagged along with Digital Underground member Money B, auditioned on the spot for the role. Director Ernest Dickerson explains, "We didn’t know who Tupac was. He was still a background dancer and a roadie for Digital Underground.
It’s easy to come in and act ballistic and go crazy in front of the camera, but to have a depth, to have a reason for that, that was the most amazing thing about Tupac because he brought that in his audition, and then later on we found out that Tupac had actually trained as an actor at the Baltimore School for the Arts. So he was a young, trained actor already, and he created a character that I believed in. The thing that he came with, that he understood about Bishop, was the pain that forces Bishop to make the decision that he makes." . . Source: @the.root
  • #TBT #PamGrier #blackisbeautiful
  • "I usually try to focus on the culture of women, trying to see what women are doing and how they’re doing it and what makes it different and what makes it visceral." #JulieDash on how she describes her films. Her next film is called, "Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl" and she describes it as, "... a documentary based upon the life of Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, who was a culinary anthropologist and Geechee girl. She was a famous cook, chef, novelist and NPR journalist for many, many years. I met her and asked her would she be in Daughters of the Dust, would she vet it for me for the Gullah-Geechee accent, and we just became best friends. She passed away last September, but you don’t stop making the film. You soldier on, because it’s her legacy." You can find #DaughtersOfTheDust currently streaming on #Netflix! You can also see her work on the upcoming season of #QueenSugar! . . Source: @guardian #womenmakemovies #blackwomeninfilm
  • Artist Spotlight: #RobertPruitt’s portraits run counter to the narrative in the images of Black people dominating mass media. Rather than being oversexualized, downtrodden or aggressive, his drawings are of stoic figures often looking out into the distance. The ethereal images are relatable. This piece entitled, "Untitled," includes a reflection of a Black Panther Party slogan. It was influenced by Bill Traylor, who was born into slavery in Alabama in 1854, is considered an “outsider artist,” someone with no formal training who begins making art later in life. He became an artist in his late ’80s. In his work Pruitt intentionally creates a connection with Black artists before him. Pruitt uses conté sticks — which are made up of natural pigments, graphite and clay — to draw his portraits. Each piece is typically drawn on white paper he has stained with coffee or tea. . . Pictured: "Untitled" conte, charcoal, dyed paper, 2016