Top 12 Black Film Festivals

February 7th, 2010

Film festival directors create fair and balanced programs for their festivals. Notwithstanding the quality of the films, a festival with all Black films is not necessarily that interesting as a mainstream festival, but opens up the doorway of opportunity for niche market festivals. As a filmmaker, when I set out to identify the top 10 festivals for Black Filmmakers, I was unable to locate any source identifying that list. Through my own experiences living and working in Los Angeles in the Entertainment industry for over 12 years, I was able to create my own list of the top 10 film festivals for Black Filmmakers. Unable to narrow the list down to 10 of equal or greatest importance, my list actually has 12 festivals on it.

1. American Black Film Festival

Originally dubbed the Acapulco Film Festival, the American Black Film Festival found its way to Los Angeles by way of Miami. Produced by Film Life, Inc., who also produces the Black Movie Awards, the American Black Film Festival is the most sleek Black Film Festival, replete with star studded Black films made independently from the studio system.

abff.com/festival

2. Pan African Film & Arts Festival, Los Angeles

With an attendance of over 200,000 people for the film and arts festival, PAFF is the largest and one of the most prestigious Black film festivals worldwide. Each year PAFF screens over 150 films from the U.S., Africa, the Caribbean, South America, the South Pacific, Europe and Canada.

paff.org

3. Hollywood Black Film Festival

Run concurrently with the Infotainment Conference, the Hollywood Black Festival is a formidable stop for Black Filmmakers, whereas many agents, distributors and sales agents, specifically looking for Black content, attend it.

hbff.org

4. Urbanworld Film Festival

Once home to its own distribution outlet, the Urbanworld Film Festival still is a choice of studios and independents to debut feature films, network and discover emerging talent.

urbanworld.com

5. San Diego Black Film Festival

Formerly known as the Noir Film Festival, the San Diego Black Film Festival has grown into a classy event where filmmakers can be treated with class and respect.

sandiegoblackfilmfestival.com

6. Black International Cinema, Berlin

In existence for over 20 years and produced by the Fountainhead Tanz Theatre in Berlin, the Black International Cinema Film Festival offers Black Filmmakers at -large the opportunity to screen in Europe and build a bridge for distribution in the Pan-African marketplace.

black-international-cinema.com

7. Pan African Film Festival, Cannes

Although not hosted by the French government like Festival de Cannes, the Cannes Pan African Film Festival offers Black Filmmakers the Cannes moniker as well as the opportunity to share their work with the European marketplace and make inroads for European distribution.

festivaldufilmpanafricain.org

8. Urban Film Series

The Urban Film Series is not actually a film festival, but rather a film screening and discussion series. Set in the nations capital, the organization and publicity engine for the Urban Film Series is stellar and will garner your film media attention throughout the nation’s capitol. In addition, the Urban Film Series also host film screenings and discussions in other major markets for the Black community.

urbanfilmseries.com

9. New York African Diaspora Film Festival

The ADFF screens films from the African Diaspora from all around the world. Like screening in Hollywood, screening in New York is never a bad idea. The New York media serves as a surrogate for the nation’s media outlet and the ADFF is successful in getting its films respectable media coverage.

nyadff.org

10. Roxbury Film Festival

One of the largest festivals of its kind in the New England area, the Roxbury Film Festival has been a consistent staple in providing filmmakers of color an opportunity to screen their work and allow their voices to be heard.

roxburyfilmfestival.com

11. San Francisco Black Film Festival

SFBFF has become a driving force integrating the work of independent Black filmmakers into the mainstream. Several films, which had their premiere at SFBFF, have secured distribution.

sfbff.org

12. BFM International Film Festival

BFM International Film Festival, sponsored by Black Filmmaker Magazine, is the premiere Black world and urban cinema festival in the United Kingdom. In addition to its premiere event in London, BFM also hosts several mini-festivals throughout the UK.

bfmmedia.com

Christopher C. Odom is a Director, Writer, Author in Nashville, TN, USA. He loves filmmaking, roller skating, partner dancing and metaphysics.

You can see the things that Chris writes about and publishes at http://www.odombooks.com

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Transformers (2007) – A Film Review

February 5th, 2010

This film is already dividing opinion, one local reviewer begins his article with “The first 32 years passed without incident. Then I saw Transformers in 2007 and my life was changed forever”. The Times newspaper had a slightly different viewpoint and eloquently described it as the equivalent of director, Michael Bay, “beating his chest and waving his penis at us for a couple of hours”. The truth lies somewhere in between.

This movie is an absolute orgy of stunning computer effects. It’s simply jaw-dropping stuff. It succeeds in this where the latest Star Wars efforts failed simply by displaying just what is possible when you unite the best visual director in the world today with a lot of money and a genre like science fiction.

For an hour I gaped in awe as it built from everyday human events into a national crisis with an unseen and unknown enemy, attacking with a force and intensity never witnessed before on Earth. Everything was buzzing along nicely as the evil Decepticons asserted their dominance and then the holier-than-thou Autobots landed and Optimus Prime, their leader, opened his big fat gob. In an instant, I realised the movie I was watching wasn’t going to finish the good work it had started. The payback never came.

It’s actually quite easy to see why it came to this. Michael Bay simply tried too hard to tick all the boxes. You cannot create a movie based on a set of kiddy toys who come packaged with their own simplistic and incomplete back story and hope to ever produce something that pleases the children that played with those toys, the geeks who have latched on to the character cult status, and the movie buffs.

The basic premise of good robots versus evil robots is completely bang-on the money. Where it fails is the human element. By making the robot effects so awesome, Bay has overcompensated by making the human reaction try to equal it. You simply can’t do it without losing the credibility. The stunts are obscenely complex, the vehicles are spotlessly shiny and the sets just get bigger and less realistic.

The result is the movie equivalent of a tag-team wrestling contest between Terminator 2 and The Rock versus 2 Fast 2 Furious and Matrix Revolutions. One minute it’s the best disaster movie ever, the next it’s a lad’s wet dream. Go and see this by all means, but when you turn off you mobile, remember to do the same with your brain.

© John Clarke

I’m a part-time reviewer trying to build up a portfolio of published work to break into magazine journalism through the back door. All my reviews (music, film or otherwise) with pictures and ratings can be found at: http://johnskibeat.blogspot.com/

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Jonathan Demme: The Early Work of Film Director Jonathan Demme

February 4th, 2010

In the mid-Eighties, at a UCLA conference on the subject of collaborative art, I met and interviewed the film director Jonathan Demme, who went on to great success as the director of such movies as “The Silence of the Lambs”, “Philadelphia” and “The Manchurian Candidate”. His recent concert movie “Neil Young: Heart of Gold” was shot during Young’s performance in Nashville; a performance that marked something of a comeback after the musician’s recovery from a brain tumor.

Demme has a long history of collaborating with musicians, and has shot videos and movies for Talking Heads, New Order, Bruce Springsteen, and The Pretenders.

Obviously extremely nervous, when it came Demme’s turn to present at the conference he avoided the grandiose statements about the nature of collaborative art that characterized some of the other presentations. Instead, he relied on showing clips of his own work in describing the various stages of production involved in making his films. Each of these stages relies on collaboration between artists in different fields and Demme placed a premium on good communication between the director and his co-workers. His success in achieving this was illustrated by the clip he showed from his film “Melvin and Howard”, for which he received the Best Director award from the New York Film Critics Circle.

The high spot of the day, however, was his new film, a short promotional piece for “The Perfect Kiss”, a song by the English band New Order. Prior to the suicide of their singer Ian Curtis, they were known as Joy Division, and were consistently the most vital force of their time in English music. Just one song, “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, and aching, unflawed gem of a record, would be sufficient to give them that reputation. “The Perfect Kiss” doesn’t reach those heights, but accompanied by a beautiful film, which simply shows the band performing the song, it is a worthy successor.

It is the film’s simplicity which lends it appeal. There’s no story line, no interpretation to intrude on the music. Talking with Demme after the seminar, he explained his approach.

“I think that it’s kind of refreshing to see straightforward performance, and this one’s live, which is so rare on MTV. It’s not lip sync, it’s not pantomiming.”

The intensity which New Order brings to their music has left them open to charges of being arrogant and aloof, but “The Perfect Kiss” disproves that. They are simply very involved in their work, and disinterested in the theatrics which so many rock musicians employ. The film employs a series of close up shots which showcase the talents of lighting designer on Henri Alekan. He had previously worked with the French director, John Cocteau, on “Beauty and the Beast”, and was enticed out of retirement at the age of 79 to work with Demme.

“When I realized that New Order liked this idea of doing it in close-ups, it occurred to me that the lighting had to be especially agreeable. I thought it should be done in a classical kind of way, so I thought we should get one of the great masters. Somebody suggested Henri Alekan, and he was pleased to do it. I gave him free rein … I said, just make yourself happy”.

The effect of his influence is stunning. The film is lit with a delicate subtlety, reminiscent of European films of the late 40s and early 50s. One small directorial intrusion lends a ghostly quality to “The Perfect Kiss”; a figure is silhouetted through the door of the studio where the band is playing, a figure reminiscent of Ian Curtis, their dead singer. The impact of this brief, five second shot is breathtaking.

Demme also showed part of his in-concert movie “Stop Making Sense” and due to fortuitous scheduling, which had a jazz band playing in the theatre that night, we were treated to a fabulous sound system. The skill with which Demme transmits the excitement of a live Talking Heads show is infectious, and the audience reacted strongly to a seething version of “Burning down the House”.

You can read more of Tuppy Glossop’s thoughts on music and popular culture at his Web site, AtTheFamilyPlace.com

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