Tourments D’Amour, screening August 18 at the Miracle Theater (DCBFF)
The Miracle Theater is hosting the inaugural DC Black Film Festival this weekend to showcase unsung black filmmakers in the District. The schedule is almost entirely populated by independent productions, but it was dissatisfaction with a mainstream release that inspired local film critic Kevin Sampson to organize the event in the first place.
In 2014, after being disappointed by Tim Story’s rom-com Think Like A Man Too, Sampson penned an open letter to the black screenwriters of the world, expressing the need for diverse stories from diverse authors.
“We only get a certain amount of films each year led by an African American,” Sampson says. “I realized there are a lot of screenwriters and directors out there trying to do the work—but they don’t have the accessibility.”
Sampson initially launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a documentary about Hollywood’s lack of diversity, but it was unsuccessful. Undeterred and inspired by the work he’d done as director of Arlington’s Rosebud Film Festival, Sampson created the DC Black Film Festival to create a platform for quality productions, with one stipulation: the films chosen must have at least one major African American crew member.
In Hollywood, it’s not uncommon to see films about black characters written and directed by white storytellers, or to have black filmmakers telling stories with primarily white casts. By highlighting the best of both alongside entirely black productions, the festival hopes to show the true breadth of black cinema.
The 125 films submitted were narrowed down to 52, primarily shorts with a handful of features. Breaking those selections down into programming blocks, clear themes began to appear with recognizable cultural motifs told from a variety of perspectives. Two highlights tackle the proliferation of police shooting unarmed black citizens from wildly different angles.
The heavy drama Junior, directed by Pearl Gluck, is a short based on a one woman show by Elle Jae Stewart about a mother grieving the death of her teenage son at the hands of a cop. It’s told in one heartwrenching take. See You Yesterday, presented by Spike Lee and directed by Stefon Bristol, takes a different angle. A teen prodigy and his best friend try to build a time machine to prevent his brother from being slain by a police officer; this short peppers its social commentary with an youthful inventiveness what would fit right in on Stranger Things.
The line-up isn’t all ripped from the headlines. Dionna McMillan’s Love, New York is a comedy about a struggling actress, and the documentary Washington Sound Museum: Hip Hop Meets the Music of Brazil follows local musician Christylez Bacon.
The festival also includes a closing night panel on Making Black Lives Matter Through Film, and on Saturday a filmmaking workshop is scheduled, which may inspire a new wave of creators.
“The great thing about film festivals is you can watch a movie and after that you can have a dialogue,” Sampson added. “So we can explore how we use film, which Roger Ebert said was the great empathy machine, to educate and address topics like police brutality and mental health.”
Creating an avenue for these voices to be heard, Sampson and his team have launched what he hopes will be a beautiful new tradition for the D.C. film community.
“We want the community to come out and support this, because at the end of the day, the numbers don’t lie,” Sampson pointed out. “By coming out, you’re saying this is something we really want to see.”
The 2017 DC Black Film Festival runs from August 17-19 at The Miracle Theatre, 535 8th Street SE. Buy tickets here.
