181/2 Philadelphia Film Festival Closing Night

So I’d like to commend The Philadelphia Film Festival on a great “half” festival, but more importantly on the fact that they opened and closed the festival with films from two African American Directors – F. Gary Gray and Lee Daniels. The African American community came out in droves to support these films. In fact, an additional screening was added for Precious at 5pm.

I don’t know if their choice of directors was coincidental, but it was refreshing. I’m going to be covering the New York International Independent Film & Video Festival next week (Oct 23-Oct 29) and when I asked them about possible films that would fall into CineFest’s “Fade to Black”, they wrote back, sorry, nothing to suggest.

Stay tuned for Commentary on Precious and excerpts from Q & A with Lee Daniels to be posted below this post.