The BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia Has Sundance Ambitions

In just eight years, the BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia has become a major celebration of the visual and narrative traditions of the African diaspora, as well as communities of global color. With programming mainly composed of short films and feature films, it is also a major window on emerging talent.

Founder Maori Karmael Holmes and her team have built a showcase not to be missed and the public is flying away. The festival sold close to 14,000 tickets for this year's event, a sharp increase from its 1,500 in its first year. Nicknamed by some members of his community "The Black Sundance", the nickname speaks of his ambitions. But Holmes said they still have a long way to go to tackle the larger challenges facing black film culture in America.

"I understand why they call us that, but I do not really know what to do with it," Holmes said of the brand. "Yes, we are very focused on filmmakers and we focus on independent filmmakers, setting the bar very high for what we accept. However, Sundance is such a large entity and has a lot of power. We are so far away from this right now.

This may be the case, but the monster that the Sundance Institute has become has not been built in eight years; it took decades. Blackstar has already garnered considerable support from across the country, from a prestigious list of funders including the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, as well as some of Canada's leading funders. Industry such as HBO. , CAA and Comcast / Xfinity; then there are individual donors and partners, such as Lionsgate / Starz. It is clear that the festival provides an invaluable service, not only to the city of Philadelphia, but also to filmmakers of color from around the world.

Maori Karmael Holmes

Adachi Pimentel

And, as they did at Sundance in its first decade, the distributors began to become aware of it. Representatives from Netflix, Topic Studios, POV and WORLD channel are expected this year. Some of them will participate in the inaugural BlackStar Pitch event, during which filmmakers will present their projects to a panel of judges to receive their feedback and win a prize in cash.

Holmes, who is also a filmmaker and curator, had no plans to launch a traditional film festival when she founded BlackStar. (The festival is named after pan-African shipping company Marcus Garvey.) Instead, she simply wanted a conservation platform and had no long-term vision for what it might be. All this changed when the festival started to evolve faster than expected.

"Honestly, I'm quite shocked by the fact that it has grown so much that people around the world have felt compelled to come from the beginning," Holmes said. "There was just this unexpected progression that I feel blessed and challenged, as well as responsible."

"Jezebel" directed by Numa Perrier

BlackStar Film Festival

While the festival was created to celebrate the work of African diaspora filmmakers, Holmes expanded the bid criteria for its festival in 2014 to include filmmakers from around the world. This is a major turning point in increasing the scope of the festival, which has been stimulated by unsolicited contributions that the festival has begun to receive from other color filmmakers. "I heard about friends who were not black, but people of color, who said the festival did not look like anything they had experienced, for reasons that often concerned politics and aesthetics, "she said. "And so we decided, if these other people felt a kinship with us, then we should consider their work and think about what a transracial ally looks like."

Eight years later, Holmes now has a clearer vision of what she wants her creation to become, based on the Sundance and Tribeca Institutes. "These are festivals, but they are also resources for filmmakers, distributors and exhibitors," she said, with a view to creating a similar device for under-represented filmmakers. "One of the advantages of BlackStar is that it's an artist camp. People met collaborators, then the work is screened at the festival a year or two later. It's really good to feel that we are promoting this kind of community. "

"America" ​​directed by Garrett Bradley

Akasha Rabut

In addition, Holmes, deeply pbadionate about film criticism, wants BlackStar to provide a space for the development of color film critics, as well as for general criticism around visual culture.

Under his curatorial vision, the festival has presented more than 400 films from nearly 20 countries and 5 continents since its creation. Notable alumni include Terence Nance ("An Excessive Simplification of Her Beauty"; "Random Acts of Flight" by HBO), Nijla Mumin ("Jinn"), Nuotama Frances Bodomo ("Afronauts"), Darius Clark Monroe ("Evolution of a criminal"). , photo director Bradford Young ("Selma"), Nefertiti Nguvu ("The Morning") and actress / director Adepero Oduye ("To be free"), to name a few.

The selected films are a combination of hand-picked work as well as those from submissions. And although they address all the history and style, Ms. Holmes said that she and her team of curators were supportive of more ambitious work (fiction and documentary) on related topics. to social justice. The range is also designed to inspire more critical conversations around the art form.

"The Burial of Kojo" directed by Blitz Bazawule

Samuel Blitz Bazawule

The 2019 lineup is BlackStar's strongest yet, with more than 100 movies from around the world. Among his highlights, his selection of opening, "Jezebel", the first feature film by actress and writer Numa Perrier. The film, which began in March at SXSW, explores the complex life of a 19-year-old girl who introduced the world of badist cam girls on the Internet. In addition, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of "Do the Right Thing," Spike Lee and Tarana Burke, founder of #MeToo, will discuss the possibilities of using a radical narrative to center social justice and foster narrative change.

There will be a taste of "Hip-Hop: the songs that rocked America", a new documentary series of executive producers Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, of Tariq's "Black Thought" Trotter (also of the band, The Roots) and Oscar-winning documentary writer Alex Gibney. And Solange Knowles will screen "When I Get Home On", as part of BlackStar's closing film presentation, dedicated to short films that examine cultural history through music.

"Suicide By Sunlight" directed by Nikyatu Jusu

Nikyatu Jusu

Other notable works include the experimental documentary "Black to Techno" by Jenn Nkiru, artist and director Jenn Nkiru, who claims the black origins of techno music; The first feature film of magical realism by musician and filmmaker Blitz Bazawule, "The Burial of Kojo"; Garrett Bradley's 'America', a cinematic omnibus challenging the idea of ​​black cinema as a 'wave', proposing instead a continuous stream of achievements; and the film "Suicide By Sunlight" by Sierra Leone filmmaker Nikyatu Jusu evoking a black vampire in the sun-protected march by her melanin.

"There are so many festivals for people of color that are representative, but it is also necessary for blacks and other people of color to go beyond representation and achieve what we really want to do with the medium," he says. said Holmes, who was guest curator for the Whitney Biennale this year. "And at BlackStar, we are very interested in working to get to this place. We constantly ask ourselves questions about how the form itself can be put forward, and I think that's one of the ways we stand out. "

The BlackStar Film Festival will take place from August 1st to 4th.

S & # 39; register: Stay on top of the latest news from film and television! Sign up for our electronic newsletters here.