Jun 27—Jul 03, 2024
Roxbury International Film Festival
Info
Venue
Virtual Event
On Demand Streaming
JUN 27 @ 10AM ET-
JUL 03 @ 11:59PM ET
Single ticket purchase window closes
JUN 30 @ 11:59PM ET
Virtual Event
On Demand Streaming
JUN 27 @ 10AM ET-
JUL 03 @ 11:59PM ET
Single ticket purchase window closes
JUN 30 @ 11:59PM ET
Directed by Chiemi Karasawa
14 minutes | All Ages
Artist Linda Goode Bryant builds communities and institution, most notably the gallery Just Above Midtown (JAM), which she started in New York City in the 70s. Following Goode Bryant as she prepares for an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art marking 40 years after JAM first opened, this short documentary looks back at how Goode Bryant brought artists from across the city and the country together and made a space for experimentation in Black and contemporary art and became home to vital conversations.
Directed by Malika Zouhali-Worrall
14 minutes | All Ages
As a child, artist Hank Willis Thomas was told he stared too much and asked too many questions. Today, these very attributes shape his artistic practice, which pivots on the theme of perspective. This short film follows Thomas as he works on The Embrace (2023), a public memorial to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King to be installed in the Boston Common, and traces how he draws from his background in photography to augment his work with other media and translates the part of an image that impacts the viewer into three-dimensional space.
Directed by Nikolai Alexander
11 minutes | All Ages
A dive into the world of Roxbury-based artist, Nygel Jones who fuses woodworking & painting to construct art in ways, that extend beyond known existing geometric shapes. The documentary follows Nygel as he is preparing for his first ever solo exhibit at Roxbury’s Hibernian Hall. Witness the art of woodworking and painting as Nygel takes us through his intimate journey, revealing the inspiration and skill behind his creative process.
Directed by Daniel Banks
30 minutes | All Ages | Trailer
HAMAPAH/THE MAP DANCE-ON-FILM (30 min.) chronicles dancer and choreographer Adam W. McKinney’s return to his ancestral homelands—Benin, Poland and United States (Arkansas, Missouri, Montana, and Wisconsin)—to trace the intersections of his African, Jewish and Native American heritages. Directed by Daniel Banks and filmed by documentary filmmaker Laura Bustillos Jáquez, the work was created over a four-year period as a way to investigate the possibility of healing transgenerational traumas. HaMapah/The Map Dance-on-Film explores issues of mixed heritage identity and ancestry and offers a complex, powerful story about humanity and connection.
Directed by Jil Servant
52 minutes | All Ages | Trailer
Marie-Josèphe Yoyotte is the first black editor in French cinema and one of the greatest. She has worked with the most famous directors of French cinema and has edited unforgettable films such as the “400 Blows” by François Truffaut or “Sugar Cane Alley” by Euzhan Palcy. Let’s re-edit time!
Directed by Khalid Sena
16 minutes | Ages 16+
Marcus a recently released Ex con has difficulties integrating back into his ever-changing community. He quickly becomes enticed to return to his old life but meets an older woman who welcomes him to work in a garden where he finds redemption and peace.
Directed by Tran Hoang Calvin
14 minutes | Ages 16 +
This uplifting documentary follows Shanyeill McCloud’s work helping the formerly incarcerated expunge their records and start their lives again.
Directed by Joshua Mori, Bret McKee
9 minutes | Ages 16+
Two people living on the streets trade secrets and give one another compassion that reinvigorates their sprits.
Directed by Gordon (Hei Yuen) Chan
39 minutes | Ages 16+ | Trailer | Content Warning: Sexual Assault
A high school graduate is faced with an impossible decision right before her commencement speech – to call out a rapist, or protect the identity of her late friend.
Directed by Frederick Lewis
1 hour 55 minutes | All Ages | Trailer
A documentary about the life and legacy of Paul Laurence Dunbar, the first African American writer to gain national and international fame.
Directed by Daniel Wolff
1 hour 10 minutes | All Ages | Trailer
Undeterred by decades of prejudice, post-Katrina neglect, and ongoing appropriation of their traditions, three generations of the extraordinary, multi-talented Harrison family guard their legacy and define what Black masking culture means in New Orleans today.
Directed by Derek A Ham
12 minutes | All Ages | Content Warning: Gun Violence | Trailer
In the late 1860’s, a U.S. Marshal bonds with a post Civil War drummer boy in their search to track down a wanted criminal.
Directed by Jirad
40 minutes | All Ages | Trailer
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, a Jamaican-born political activist and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), is on trial in New York in 1923. Following the leadership of J. Edger Hoover & the BOI (later, the FBI), the government has charged Garvey with mail fraud in connection with selling stocks for the Black Star Line – a shipping line designed to forge a link between North America and Africa.
Directed by Adrienne T. Hawkins, Ronnie T. Thomas, Akili Jamal Haynes & Joe Gonzalez
14 minutes | All Ages
Malcolm X and the relationship to race in America.
Directed by Elijah Brewer
11 minutes | All Ages
A young woman‘s impractical idealization of love is put to the ultimate test when she discovers that she is a character in her favorite romance novelist’s latest book.
Directed by Pat Treuer
47 minutes | All Ages
Join 5 standup comedians from the African American Community as they share their stories & experiences through standup comedy as individuals in the first half and through a roundtable as a group in the second half!
1 hour 55 minutes | All Ages
Directed by Kim Moir
This film is the culmination project of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture, in association with the Pew Research Center, five-year study of Black Millennials and faith. gOD-Talk explores the lives of seven Black Millennials—Atheist, Buddhist, Christians, Muslim, African Traditional Religion, and Spiritualist—and the challenges and discoveries they have with faith in the 21st century.
1 hour 27 minutes | All Ages
Directed by Isara Krieger
Hopeful Boston Public School students are given a chance to dramatically alter their paths through an alternative school year. The journey they embark on is longer than they could ever imagine: the goal is to access the promising futures that the most elite education spaces provide, but what will be the cost? As high school seniors, four years later, the students revisit their journeys and reflect on that question.
1 hour 30 minutes | All Ages
Directed by Damien Hauser
Ten year old Aisha is given a school assignment to figure out what she wants to be when she grows up. She soon realizes that everyone is taking over their parents‘ businesses and professions, but she has bigger dreams. She wants to go to Europe and become an actress. Her plan is to become a fisher so that she can sail to Europe, but her mother thinks that fishing should be left to men. Despite all this, she meets a fisherman and alcoholic named Hassan, who promises to teach her how to fish.