Monday, June 29, 2009

Dirty Gardener: The Newark Black Film Festival



July 1 7 pm Newark Museum
July 2 6 pm NJ State Museum

THE CONTINENT UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL
This is My Africa
This award-winning documentary has been described "a 50-minute crash course in African culture." It chronicles a unique journey into an Africa that many may not know about, with recollections by writers and artists on food, books, art, music and film. 2008, 50 minutes
Speaker: Zina Saro-Wiwa, Writer/Filmmaker/Director
Hosts: Gloria H. Buck and Akili Buchanan

July 8 7 pm Newark Museum
July 9 6 pm NJ State Museum

TO BE YOUNG, GIFTED, BLACK AND SAFE
Dreams Deferred: The Sakia Gunn Film Project
In 2003, 15-year-old Sakia Gunn was brutally murdered on the streets of Newark because she dared to be herself: a young, Black lesbian. Taken from her world, her friends and her family before her life truly began, Sakia's story has only begun to be told. Her story demands attention and compassion, not just for Sakia, but for all of the young Black women and men who pay the price of intolerance, shame, hate and silence. 2008, 58 minutes
Speakers: Charles B. Brack, Producer/Director and Jane Dowell-Burton, Newark-Essex Pride Coalition
Hosts: Ralph R. Waller and Tynesha McHarris

July 15 7 pm NJ Institute of Technology
July 16 6 pm NJ State Museum

WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?
Medicine for Melancholy
A love story of bikes and one-night stands is told through the eyes of two twenty-something urbanites in search of self-definition. Barry Jenkins' award-winning independent film redefines the date movie, giving it new life, new edge and a brand new soul. 2008, 88 minutes
Speaker: Barry Jenkins, Writer/Filmmaker
Hosts: Theodore T. Johnson and Anthony G. Clark

July 22 7 pm Newark Museum
July 23 6 pm NJ State Museum

CASTING BOOKER T. WASHINGTON'S LONG SHADOW IN NJ
A Place Out of Time: The Bordentown School
This film examines a seventy-year period when America cared little about the education of African-Americans. New Jersey's Bordentown School stood out because it was an educational utopia that taught values, discipline and life skills to generations of African-American children. 2008, 60 minutes
Speaker: David Davidson, Producer/Filmmaker/Director
Hosts: LeRoy Henderson and Dr. Clement A. Price

July 29 7 pm Newark Museum
July 30 6 pm NJ State Museum

BIRTH OF A MYTH AND A NEARLY FORGOTTEN RESPONSE
Birth of a Nation (segments)
This classic 1915 silent film directed by D.W. Griffith was a cinematic breakthrough that was made at the expense of a believable historical narrative about American life before, during and especially after the Civil War. Its controversy is exceeded only by the damage it wrought to African American history and the understood role of the Ku Klux Klan in the history of the South. 1915, segments only

Within Our Gates
This film by the pioneering black filmmaker and entrepreneur Oscar Micheaux is an early depiction of race and race relations in America during the formative years of Jim Crow and racial terrorism. It is considered a response to The Birth of a Nation, with a story focusing on an African American woman who travels north to help a minister raise funds in support of a school of impoverished black children. 1920, 79 minutes
Speaker: Donald Boyle, Author/Historian
Hosts: Richard Wesley and Dr. Miriam Petty

For more info go here.

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