12th Annual BlackStar Film Festival Coverage August 2-6

Note: All Images Link Thru to Pages They Represent

INVISIBLE BEAUTY is a moving portrait of former model, agent, and activist Bethann Hardison. Directors Bethann Hardison and Frédéric Tcheng construct an original and uniquely intimate exploration of a life well lived and shine a light on an untold chapter in the fight for diversity and representation”. – BlackStar Film Festial

T&T: I absolutely fell in love with Bethann. I wasn’t really familiar with her, never knew Kadeem Hardison from “A Different World” had an illustriously famous Mom! I enjoy and appreciate what the fashion industry represents and I’m always up for being clued in; but I don’t really follow it. Never been much of a magazine person, never been to a runway show. Every Gen X-er knows the Supermodels of the 80’s, but I don’t know who’s hot now. And I certainly never realized that for a whole decade in the early 00’s that black models were not being used for anything, anywhere 🤯. How did I miss this!?!

After the Fall of the Berlin Wall, a trend started with using Eastern European waif like girls in the Fashion Industry. Models like Iman, Naomi and Tyra who were hot, were no longer being featured and no new black models were being hired. It wasn’t an oversight or underground knowledge. Agencies and Design Houses just flat out said, we don’t want black models – Period.

Bethann came about in the 70’s. She didn’t actually set out to be a model, but she traveled in the right circle of creatives and found herself being a trend setter, working with the best design houses around the globe. Opening the doors for many black models. Later, she unprecedentedly created her own unbelievably successful modeling agency, where she employed all races and nationalities and got them paid! She was already retired, when her colleagues called for her to come back to the scene and right this racial discrimination.

The film also explore her relationship with Kadeem and just her overwhelming energy and ability to mother/mentor everyone around her, yet no one really knows her deeply.

I absolutely love this documentary and will add it to my Top10 list for 2023!

THE SPACE RACE (co-directors Lisa Cortés & Diego Hurtado de Mendoza) (National Geographic Documentary Films), an emotive and educational exploration of the experiences of the first Black astronauts. Featuring candid interviews from Ed Dwight, Guion Bluford, Charles Bolden, and Victor Glover, the documentary spotlights the oft-omitted racial injustice narratives and present-day realities of these pioneers.

This film weaves together archival footage of U.S. space expeditions, Afrofuturist cultural milestones, and stories told by Black astronauts into an enlightening dialogue about the expectations placed on trailblazers. Tackling defining moments of American history, from the Kennedy assassination to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster to the George Floyd uprising, these dynamic discussions posit new meditations on the fight for equality. As the documentary transverses space and decades, it encourages a reclamation of the past as a way to create a limitless future.–– Shakira Refos

T&T: I watched this doc twice during the festival, mainly because the first screening didn’t have a Q&A, but I could have arrived just for that; instead I really wanted to revisit this enlightening doc. Who was the first Black Astronaut? Asking or knowing the answer to this question never entered my mind all these years! Not even after seeing the movie “Hidden Figures” where we learned about Mathematician, Katherine Johnson’s contribution to NASA. That’s the insidious thing about systemic racism it’s so good at suppressing black people, it can make society forget to even look for inclusion in some spaces, like Space!

I’m thrilled to learn about these brilliant, trailblazing, American men and women who have devoted their lives to science and space travel. Making documentaries like this widely available is key in inspiring and reinforcing to black and brown children that they belong everywhere.

DAY 2 – I stayed home and Virtually Watched “A Place of Our Own”

Laila and Roshni, two trans women, are looking for a house after they are evicted from the place they rented. It soon becomes evident that their search for a home is also their ongoing search for a place in this society that wants to keep them away in a section that cannot be the center.

“This is the second feature from Ektara Collective, an independent collaborative of filmmakers which makes films about and involving marginalised and disenfranchised communities, following 2017’s Checkmate.  There are a few elaborately mounted confrontation scenes, such as when a seemingly liberal journalist attempts to conduct a deliberately provocative interview with the pair. Yet more throwaway moments have a bigger impact; Laila pointing out an isolated house on an island as an ideal home, away from the glare of civilisation. The film’s real power, however, lies in its plain, unpretentious sincerity, which enables a viewer to empathise with the frustrations of Laila and Roshni and admire their humour and grace in adversity. They never succumb to cynicism or bitterness, defeat or victimisation”… READ MORE By Namrata Joshi, ScreenDaily

BSFF23 Q&A with Adura Onashile – GIRL

Eleven-year-old Ama and her mother, Grace, take solace in the gentle but isolated world they obsessively create. But Ama’s thirst for life and her need to grow and develop, challenges the rules of their insular world and gradually forces Grace to reckon with a past she struggles to forget.

Click Center Image for 5 Questions Interview with SUNDOWN ROAD Filmmakers:
M.Asli Dukan and Nikki Harmon both members of SIFTMedia 215

POST UPDATE 8/8: Pictures from “Sundown Road” screening, part of the “Peturbed” Shorts Program – Click HERE FOR Q&A VIDEO on YouTube

POST UPDATE 8/8: FIRE THROUGH DRY GRASS – WINNER OF THE JURY PRIZE FOR BEST FEATURE DOCUMENTARY!

Click Image for 5 Questions Interview with FIRE THROUGH DRY GRASS Filmmakers

Fire Through Dry Grass follows the Reality Poets, a group of Black and brown disabled artists who began filming inside their NYC nursing home as they were fighting for their lives during the pandemic. This is a story of the power of art and community to disrupt cycles of oppression.

BSFF23 Q&A with Wally Fall – DANCING THE STUMBLE

The inside of a psychiatric facility is one of the last places many of us would ever willingly go, but that’s exactly where Dancing the Stumble’s documentary filmmaker, Wally Fall, takes us. A hospital on the African island of Martinique (the birthplace of Fall, as well as famed psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon) hires a young female artist to teach a group of day-care patients how to perform bélé, a Creole dance originating from the island. Despite the varying diagnoses and differences among the admitted individuals, dancing becomes a common ground from which they can start to access healing, both personally and communally.

Grappling with his own relationship to mental health and that of the people he’s loved and lost, Fall attends the classes himself, dancing alongside his subjects onscreen. It is a generous gesture that subverts the stigmatic and othering gaze. The ambiguity between who the documenters and documented are, and when subjects are inside the facility versus outside in their daily lives, blurs the sometimes-arbitrary boundaries we often rely on to label and separate us from each other and our essential common humanity… READ MORE Broadstreet Review

JURY & AUDIENCE AWARDS FOR BLACKSTAR 2023

Jury Awards:

BEST FEATURE DOCUMENTARY

Jurors: Loira Limbal, Louis Massiah, Naomi Johnson

Winner: Fire Through Dry Grass, dirs. Andres “Jay” Molina and Alexis Neophytides

Wearing snapback caps and Air Jordans, the Reality Poets aren’t typical nursing home residents. In Fire Through Dry Grass, these young, Black and Brown, disabled artists document their pandemic experiences, their rhymes underscoring the danger they feel in the face of institutional neglect.

Jury Comment: “The feature documentary jury-award winning film stands strong as an investigative report with its concise clarity and unique perspective, yet it’s also stylized beautifully as a tapestry that weaves the characters together. With its brilliant approach, the jury wishes to recognize the many challenges these filmmakers faced in these conditions during this time period, yet made a film with elevated sound design, compelling cinematography, and phenomenal characters.” 

BEST FEATURE NARRATIVE 

Jurors: Aseye Tamakloe, Elhum Shakerifar, Jason Reynolds

Winner: Girl, dir. Adura Onashile

Eleven-year-old Ama and her mother, Grace, take solace in the gentle but isolated world they obsessively create. But Ama’s thirst for life and her need to grow and develop challenge the rules of their insular world and gradually force Grace to reckon with a past she struggles to forget.

Jury Comment: “A visually stunning film, this feature narrative pushes us to infer, imagine, and stretch our imagination. The nuances of this film were sharp, and its silences were haunting — ultimately, the filmmaker made us feel what we couldn’t see. This is compelling storytelling at its finest, complete with excellent performances, visual metaphors, and a brilliant use of space that served the story.” 

BEST SHORT NARRATIVE

Jurors: Carmen Thompson, Dagmawi Woubshet, DJ Lynnée Denise

Winner: Sèt Lam, dir. Vincent Fontano

In an insular city’s ghetto, in the midst of a trance ritual, a young girl is paralyzed by fear. She is afraid her loved ones may be hurt or even disappear. It is then that her grandmother tells her the strange tale of Edwardo, the first one of his kin to have seen and fought death.

Jury Comment: “The winning film selected by the short narrative jury is hypnotic, strange, and unpredictable, one that embodies the very genre of short filmmaking. Though the film is a moving, shifting one, everything felt intentional, and with a unique directorial voice, the filmmaker managed to build trust and deliver exquisite visual imagery.” 

CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE LIST of WINNERS

Original Post 7/10/23

BlackStar’s Philadelphia Filmmaker Lab

Stephanie Malson is a Member of SIFTMedia 215 (Philly Female Film Collective).

The 2023 BlackStar Film Festival is set to feature a total of 93 films representing 31 countries, including 19 world, 11 North America, 5 US, and 10 East Coast premieres. 47 films will be Philadelphia premieres. The films presented this year engage with climate justice, queer stories, and narratives of migration and displacement.

Highlights include the world premiere of Ja’Tovia Gary’s QuietAs It’s Kept, a contemporary cinematic response to Toni Morrison’s first novel “The Bluest Eye”, and Invisible Beauty, a documentary championing the career of pioneering model and activist Bethann Hardison. Additionally, La Lucha directed by Violeta Ayala, which will have its world premiere at the festival, tells the story of a group of people with disabilities in Bolivia who trek the Andes in their wheelchairs, in order to protest for their pension and fight for their civil rights.

This year they’ve programmed panels of terrific guests for 
The Daily Jawn Stage rather then the
Daily Jawn Talk Show of last year

Check out the FULL BLACKSTAR SCHEDULE – A-Z filtered by Experimental | Feature Docs | Feature Narratives | Shorts Documentary | Short Narratives | Party, Panel, Yoga

Post Update: 7/14/23

“We are excited to present another groundbreaking lineup and hope it allows filmmakers of the global majority to connect with new audiences through intimate and important storytellings,” said BlackStar Chief Executive and Artistic Officer Maori Karmael Holmes. “We consider every aspect of the festival to be an intentional community building effort, centered on joy, radical care, and thriving, and we are looking forward to presenting another festival that embodies this generous spirit.”

“Once again we went through the film programming process with a brilliant group of curators, makers, and thinkers. At this year’s festival we will explore wide-ranging and urgent themes, from queer futures in cinema to climate justice and resistance to land theft,” added Festival Director Nehad Khader. “And we are thrilled to be able to continue to share this work with our community around the world both in-person in Philadelphia and virtually.”

Be sure to Follow T&T on Twitter and IG Stories during the Fest and Return
here for Wrap up & Reviews!

See MORE BLACKSTAR Film Festival Coverage Through The Years