Blackstar Film FestivalBlackstar Film Festival
  • About Us
    • Program Guides
    • Board
    • Gallery
      • 2013 Festival Photos
      • 2014 Festival Photos
      • Panel Videos
    • Press
    • Program Committee
    • Staff
  • Submit
    • 2019 Submissions
    • Youth Submissions
  • Festival
    • 2018 Schedule
    • Films
    • Festival Jurors
    • Individual Donors
    • Partners
    • Sponsors
  • Attend
    • Tickets & Passes
      • Ticketing Policy
    • Media Credentials
    • Venues
    • Map
    • Hotels
  • Support
    • Advertising
    • Donate
    • Membership
    • Sponsorship
    • Vendors
    • Intern
    • Volunteer
  • Contact

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 communities of color, showcasing films by black, brown and indigenous people from around the world.

Twitter

@BlackStarFest - 18 hours

Great piece on ⁦@jatovia⁩ Artist Ja’Tovia Gary and Her Films Are a Force to Be Reckoned With | Cultured Magazine https://t.co/etkWIEm1DW

@BlackStarFest - 20 hours

RT @wanuri: Starting in New York @BAM_Brooklyn on the 19th April. I’ll be there for Q&A’s! So excited! See you there! @OkayAfrica https://t…

Instagram

  • “How We Fight White Supremacy” will be hitting the shelves on March 26. Co-authors Akiba Solomon and Kenrya Rankin will be in Philly in April for two readings. Summary: This celebration of Black resistance, from protests to art to sermons to joy, offers a blueprint for the fight for freedom and justice — and ideas for how each of us can contribute. As Colorlines editors Akiba Solomon and Kenrya Rankin show, Black Americans subvert and resist life-threatening forces as a matter of course. In these pages, leading organizers, artists, journalists, comedians, and filmmakers offer wisdom on how they fight White supremacy. It’s a must-read for anyone new to resistance work, and for the next generation of leaders building a better future. Contributors include: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Tarana Burke, Harry Belafonte, Michael Arceneaux, Dr. Yaba Blay, Alicia Garza, Maori Karmael Holmes, Imani Perry, and more.
  • Marsai Martin wishes she could tell her nine-year-old self, "What you say matters, and your voice is heard." The physical manifestation of that? #LittleMovie, which intentionally has a black woman director (Tina Gordon) and an all-black lead cast, as part of Marsai’s plan to "change the normal." "[The movie] made me feel like this can happen. It wasn’t impossible. We definitely need more [representation] in the industry," Marsai says. "Of course, the more I keep creating, the more that will probably happen." In February 2019, her company Genius Productions, which she founded in 2017, signed a first-look deal with Universal for her scripted projects. _______________________________________________ In @littlethemovie Marsai plays the younger version of confident, stylish Jordan Sanders (Regina Hall); Jordan is a successful, if demanding, businesswoman who is magically cursed to relive her preteen years as punishment for the mean way she treats her employees (including Issa Rae’s April). Marsai plays young Jordan as wildly ambitious, with ideas that already hint at her tech prowess. But she’s also scared, still scarred by a public humiliation during a school talent show where she was attacked for proudly displaying those ideas. When she earns her way back to being an adult, it’s with the message that she was bullied into becoming a bully herself — but she knew who she was inside all along. . . . Source: @teenvogue 📷: Bec Parsons
  • Congrats to BlackStar alum @heidi_saman @tchaiko @missnuma for joining the amazing all-female directing crew on @queensugarown. Watch these ladies make their directorial television debuts when the new season premieres on Wednesday, June 11.
  • Submissions for this year’s Youth Program are now open! The BlackStar Youth Program exists to showcase diverse and cutting edge work of black, brown and indigenous youth (ages 22 and under) from around the world! Films should not exceed 20 minutes. While we accept work from youth media programs, we also encourage young independent filmmakers to submit. 📅 Deadline: April 30, 2019 Submit: blackstarfest.org/youth-submissions/ . . . #filmfestival #indiefilm #shortfilm #youthfilm #youthfilmmakers #indiefilmmakers #indiefilmmaking
  • A few weeks after #BlackPanther's release, #WinstonDuke attended the Oscars with Lupita Nyong'o and Panther co-star Danai Gurira. At an afterparty, he spotted #JordanPeele and walked over to congratulate him on his Oscar win for #GetOut's screenplay. "I'm not afraid to go up to people and just say, 'Hi, I'm new, and I'm a big fan,' " Duke says. "You can only be 'new' once, so I took full advantage of that." Peele, as it happened, was looking for the male lead in his next movie (#usmovie), someone to star opposite Nyong'o as her husband, Gabe, in a horror story about a couple who take their two kids on vacation to a beachside town and are stalked by four freaky strangers who look exactly like them. Duke threw every bit of his Yale training at the part, prepping for weeks. He studied horror classics — The Shining, The Birds, The Sixth Sense — and even hired a dramaturge (a literary adviser who helps interpret scripts) to comb through the symbolism in the screenplay. To Duke, Gabe wasn't just a character but an opportunity to put on the screen exactly the sort of fully fleshed-out black male character he wished he'd seen in movies when he was growing up. "I saw him as funny. I saw him having a rich sexual life — which you don't get to see that often. I wanted him to be thick, sexy, funny, playful, serious, deadly — I wanted him to be everything." . . . Source: @hollywoodreporter 📷: Claudia Lucia
  • BlackStar alumna and last year’s Favorite Documentary Feature award winner Assia Boundaoui @assuss, shared her journey making “The Feeling of Being Watched” with @idaorg. “By the time I completed my film, I was battered but transformed. Had I mistakenly gone on to make a “journalistically objective” film, it would have been far less truthful than the blisteringly personal, investigative film I ended up making. I used journalistic tools to investigate the US Justice Department, and I left behind the baggage of objectivity that had mired me for so many years. The myth of objectivity has so often been used as code for the white straight male gaze, and this tyranny of one perspective is used to negate the validity of other points of view. I don’t believe in objectivity; I believe in transparency. We each have a particular lens through which we see the world, and being transparent about where we stand and revealing the seams of our processes is as about as truthful as anyone can get.” . . . #documentary #indiefilm #womendirect #filmmaking
  • Check out the @waysofseeingscreening x Weeksville Film Festival on March 27th in Brooklyn, NYC. Ways of Seeing looks to amplify untapped talent and brilliant visions by young Black and Latina women. Join them as they foster community by allowing us all to see ourselves being recreated, remolded, shifted, explored, and reimagined by the filmmakers in our programs. More info at the link in bio @waysofseeingscreening
  • Coming up in three weeks, the preferred submission deadline for this year’s festival! Click the link in our bio @blackstarfest to submit! ____________________________________________ BlackStar Film Festival returns to Philadelphia, Aug 1-4, 2019! ____________________________________________ 🌟 Preferred Deadline: 03/29/19 🌟 Late Deadline: 04/26/2019 ____________________________________________ #bsff19 #byindiemeansnecessary #blackstarfilmfest #filmfestival #indiefilm #blackdirectors #blackcinema