The Blackstar Film Festival community of artists come together for a common mission in Philadelphia. Throughout the film festival a realization of issues come from a global majority, activism in documentary features, and where the identity of the films serve the identity of the audience.
Americans and to others as producers and writers, creative and management talent. They will bring their own stories and passions that will, after experimentation, failures and second opportunities, succeed. …
-Henry Hampton’s 1992 PBS Annual Meeting Keynote Speech
BlackStar Film Festival 2021, featured the documentary of Eyes on the Prize: Hallowed Ground directed by Sophia Nahli Alison.
Film for Liberation
A festival that changes the scene in Philadelphia for 4 days annually in the end of Summer.
The Daily Jawn
Live Talk Show each day of the festival invites film makers, curators, and other artists to talk about the issues in their work. The films bring together the support of community, and fashion and style to the city.
Hosted by Maori Karmael Holmes, Anne Ishi, and Rashid Zagat.
North American Premiere
The Great North
Jenn Nkiru
Sketches
The quick imagery communicated a quality of media from diverse modes of documentation. It revealed a savvy way into the power objectively in the use of imagery. The mention of educational usage, reminded me of the text book industry. And Nkiru’s remix of the spacial dimension, through the archives, renderings of futures bound by dreamscapes contained by architecture. It is performed intricately woven into the spacial context to base the imagination in this world, and reveal a deeper subconscious body. Through nonlinear narrative, symbolism, and repetitive themes, like the shared nomenclature of MANCHESTER. A transient character, the documenting into the social unity of working people from a geographical subject, and their desired space for dreaming.
There are tones of human rights up against something bigger than we are, in architecture for instance, a structure intentional and placed in a way that defines us. And there is something beyond this earthly world, those instances of spirituality, the front room as museum of living archeology, and community centers of multiple usages suggest multiple realities. The grounds in which she explored reveal a civil rights movement beyond just race, but implores class injustices. This examined the archival collected material that goes back to the British slave trade, and never seen before now. The medium of the different documents shows a variety of qualities, a futuristic quality or inherited antiquated list. Bringing us to the instructive quality, a guided imagination into the freedom of how we interpret the details informing the reality of the world we live in. That is, informed imagery that evokes self determination, directed by Jenn Nkiru guided us to freely explore these sources, what they tell us, versus the value of owning the true documentary of our lived reality.
An experimentation means to push the meaning really to explore how we look toward these documents informing our surroundings, architecture that defines a space, and a social power that played a significant role in terms of place. Naturally, these are many ancestry lineages, and part of the roots which trace back to- THE GREAT NORTH.
The feature film by Nelson Makengo
2019 feature documentary about the deficiency of electricity in the villages of the Congo. The symbolic power and dangers at night. The light religiously and physically transfers power to seers, or for the activist in the street politically. Inspiring hope in children of Kinshasa, Congo appears with bright lights and playfully suited in a Santa Claus costume. Believers pray to God, given the message from the priest is not to give up, and suicide is only a dream because of these terrible conditions. We are guided by light, into the flooded streets by a romantic notion of a dirty Venetian paradise.
The African Desperate
by Martine Syms