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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.

Twitter

@BlackStarFest - 9 hours

RT @TheAtlantic: Tarell Alvin McCraney talks with @ethiopienne about his new Netflix film “High Flying Bird,” working with Steven Soderberg…

@BlackStarFest - 10 hours

RT @kyenvu: Kyenvu is available on @hulu thanks to @nbcunitips ! Watch our twenty minute short and let us know what you think. Share with…

Instagram

  • "One of the things that I love about filmmaking is that you can only try and be great at it. There's no perfecting it because that's subjective. But it's something you're reaching for. For me, the success of #EvesBayou gave me the courage to keep reaching and keep trying to think outside the box and not be intimidated. I often think that I was very brave then — it was a very brave move. If I'd known too much about Hollywood, I might not have done it." — Kasi Lemmons (Dir. Eve’s Bayou) . . . #horrornoire #kasilemmons #blackdirectors #womendirectors #womendirect
  • Don’t miss your chance to watch @theacademy nominated doc from RaMell Ross @halecountydoc on @independentlens on PBS.org until 2/25/19! “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” is one of the year's most critically acclaimed films, is a dreamy and intimate journey through the world of Hale County, Alabama, a richly detailed glimpse into life in America’s Black Belt. . . . #halecountydoc #documentary #documentaryfilm #oscars2019 #ramellross #pbs
  • Angela Bassett, Spike Lee and Ruth E. Carter collaborated on a shoot and paid homage to #MalickSidibé, Gordon Parks and Carrie Mae Weems, among others, in this series for @wmag photographed by LaToya Ruby Frazier (who also shot the BlacKkKlansman posters).
  • Good news, @nijla1’s @jinnthemovie_ is streaming for free on Amazon Prime Video! This film won both the Best and Favorite Feature Narrative Awards at #BSFF18! Jinn is a story about Summer (Zoe Renee), an African American girl who navigates friendships, romance and a troubled relationship with her mother (Simone Missick) as she begins to embrace Muslim teachings.
  • Don’t miss the early deadline for submission to this year’s BlackStar Film Festival! Students can submit for FREE by the preferred deadline. Get more info and submit your entry at the link in our bio @blackstarfest ____________________________________________ BlackStar Film Festival returns to Philadelphia, Aug 1-4, 2019! ____________________________________________ 🌟 Early Deadline: 02/22/19 🌟 Preferred Deadline: 03/29/19 🌟 Late Deadline: 04/26/2019 ____________________________________________ #bsff19 #byindiemeansnecessary #blackstarfilmfest #filmfestival #indiefilm #blackdirectors #blackcinema
  • Watch a clip from: “As Told to G/D Thyself,” a short film from The Ummah Chroma collective, which consists of cinematographer Bradford Young, directors Terence Nance (HBO’s “Random Acts of Flyness”), Jenn Nkiru (Beyoncé and Jay Z’s “APESHIT”), editor Marc Thomas (Michael & Javier) and Kamasi Washington (an award-winning, multi-instrumentalist and producer). The short made its debut at this year’s #Sundance film festival. Washington explained, “The first thing we did together was try to figure out what that vision was, which led to discussions about story, emotions, the progressive nature of the ideas the album had, and then Terence came and really cultivated it all into a treatment.” That treatment was given its first visual cues by Nkiru, a British-Nigerian filmmaker, and the only member of the collective not based in the States. Early on, she would set the tone for the form the musical short film would eventually take: a 24-minute variable series of sequences — including a fantastical, if foreboding, forest ritual, and a floating monolith evocative of that to be found in “2001: A Space Odyssey” — that could exist as narratives on their own, all linked by a blend of Washington’s improvisational score. . . Source: @indiewire @kamasiwashington
  • At this year’s #Sundance Film Festival, filmmaker @chinonyechukwu broke barriers by becoming the first black woman to win the the festival’s biggest prize, the Grand Jury Prize for her U.S. Dramatic entry for her film “Clemency.” Clemency stars Alfre Woodard as a prison warden haunted by her own psychological demons as she develops an emotional connection with an inmate (Aldis Hodge) scheduled for execution under her watch. Richard Schiff, Wendell Pierce, Richard Gunn, and Danielle Brooks also star. _________________________________________________ On the process of making the film Chukwu shared, “I was in New York City at the time when I wrote the first two drafts, and then I moved to Ohio and I volunteered on a clemency case for a woman named Tyra Patterson who was serving a life sentence for a crime she did not commit. Tyra has since gotten out over a year ago. I also volunteered on about 13 other clemency cases for women serving life sentences, protecting themselves against their abusers. I went to prisons around the country and spoke to even more wardens and lawyers and men who were exonerated from death row, men who were on death row. I asked them to read my script, and they ripped it apart completely. I also created a film program in a women’s prison … where I [taught] incarcerated women to make their own short films. And all of that clearly informed every draft at my directorial approach, and really grounded it in a level of reality and humanity and, hopefully, authenticity.” _________________________________________________ Next, Chukwu is attached to direct an adaptation of former Black Panther leader Elaine Brown’s memoir, “A Taste of Power.” Elaine Brown is the first and only female leader of the Black Panther party from 1974 – 1977, this after Huey Newton was exiled to Cuba. She led the Panther party through turbulent times in Oakland to political success in the city, while fending off threats from local police, the FBI, and disaffected party members. . . . Source: @deadline; @indiewire; theundefeated.com 📷: Paul Sarkis; @sundanceorg
  • #OscarMicheaux wrote, directed and produced 40 or so films from 1919 to 1948, many of which addressed issues of race. The films carry with them the added excitement of black characters doing things that at the time seemed unthinkable onscreen. Women could be damsels in distress, intelligent enough to plot and scheme, and were able to recreate the feel of a black-and-tan show on black-and-white film. Men were rugged and sometimes flawed but rarely surrendered their masculinity for comedic effect. Swipe to see a still from a scene from the 1929 film “Wages of Sin.” Micheaux was a gifted visionary, with an eye for talent, evinced by decisions like casting the dazzling stage actor Paul Robeson in his first role on the big screen. His films depicted the basic humanity of black characters wrestling with issues like racial ambiguity, while at the same time countering the racist tropes in works like D. W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” (1915). His movies were shot on a shoestring budget and sometimes looked it. But his output as a filmmaker was groundbreaking. “I have always tried to make my photoplays present the truth, to lay before the race a cross-section of its own life, to view the colored heart from close range,” several sources quote him as saying in an open letter to black newspapers in 1924. “It is only by presenting those portions of the race portrayed in my pictures, in the light and background of their true state, that we can raise our people to greater heights.” He was eventually given recognition for doing so, with a Directors Guild special award in 1986, more than three decades after his death. . . . Source: Written by Monica Drake for @nytimes 📷: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library