Unimagined dreams are seen through filmmaking and recently students screened their films through various outlets. Some students make their first films through a history project in North Carolina, while another group has their finished films exposed at a local film festival.
Check out how some of these experiences came to be.
Tracking Black History in North Carolina
“Coming Home” is a short film that takes viewers to the inaugural Princeville Homecoming, which celebrates the history of the first town in the nation chartered by Black people.
The AfroPop Digital Series presents the film for a journey to North Carolina to a historic Black town.
Princeville has been on the frontlines of climate change and has endured flooding for hundreds of years. The homecoming, a two-day festival of music, food, and culture, was a testament to survival and showed that this community can still celebrate. Here is a trailer for the film.
The film project was from the inaugural Freedom Hill Youth Media Camp, a four-week documentary film program in Princeville, North Carolina.
Filmmaker Resita Cox founded the program, which is connected with her environmental short film Freedom Hill. Now in its third year, students from around the country aged 14 to 19 come to North Carolina to study various aspects of filmmaking.
“Coming Home” is available on Black Public Media’s YouTube channel. Black Public Media is a Harlem-based national nonprofit that has funded and distributed films about the Black experience since 1979.
DC Black Film Festival Perfect for Emerging Filmmakers
Whether a short film or a full-length movie, the DC Black Film Festival (DCBFF) is one of the best end-of-summer offerings for the metro area. Celebrating its eighth year, this festival brings together new and veteran filmmakers with films screened at the Miracle Theatre in Barracks Row in the Capitol Hill area of the District.
The audience viewed seven short films written, produced, and directed by university filmmakers in a track called “The Future is Bright.”
- “Miss Virginia’s Masterclass” is a dramatic comedy about an intergenerational friendship between two African American women. It’s a love letter to all the elders who have helped us on our journeys.
- “Petty Zoo” shows an African American woman adjusting to a workplace where a White female supervisor creates an awkward and hostile environment. The supervisor is puzzled by natural hair.
- “Riley’s Hill” finds two estranged half-brothers reconnecting at their childhood home after their father’s death.
- “Spare Me” shows an African American man struggling with a flat tire while remembering an elder’s warnings about sundown laws, where it was dangerous in some areas to be out after dark.
- “Rhythm & Blues” finds a young male music producer working with his female vocalist as their personal relationship puts a kink in how things move forward.
- “Simmer” is about an emotionally distraught African American high school teen who navigates through the relationship with his father, school and his creative talents.
- “Like Me” explores the age-old question of whether attending a historically Black college or university (HBCU) or a predominantly White institution (PWI) is better for your future.
Join the DCBFF email list and add this film festival to your list. Go to dcbff.org/.