A Look Back: Luchina Fisher’s “Mama Gloria” brings a hopeful outlook to the young trans community

For Women’s History Month and Trans Visibility Day approaching on March 31, we bring back our interview from the Chicago International Film Festival in October 2020. We are proud to support “Mama Gloria” – an intimate profile of Chicago’s trailblazing Black transgender icon and activist […]

Behind the Camera with Charlotte Hornsby, cinematographer of Mariama Diallo’s Sundance 2022 feature debut, “Master” 

The surprising horror film “Master” directed by Mariama Diallo debuted at Sundance 2022. I’ve never seen the Black female experience so intimately told in this setting. We are brought into the world of a mostly white elite east coast private college that has been around […]

Breaking through the cliché of Poly Styrene: An examination of Celeste Bell’s documentary on her mother

Punk, also called punk rock, is an aggressive form of rock music that coalesced into an international (though predominantly Anglo-American) movement in 1975–80. Often politicized and full of vital energy beneath a sarcastic, hostile facade, punk spread as an ideology and an aesthetic approach, becoming […]

Look back: ‘Moonlight’: removing the physical armour

“Moonlight” (2016) is a poetic and universal tale. It is a coming-of-age story for everyone who has every questioned “Who am I?” The central character in Tarell Alvin McCraney’s story is a Black American young man in Miami, yet he is also all of us, in all locations of this world growing up and coming to terms with our unique identities and surroundings.

Look Back: Breaking down walls and redesigning them: Production Design Oscar winner Hannah Beachler talks Wakanda, ‘Moonlight’, and more

Featured back in October 2019. We aren’t just taking down ceilings, we are busting down walls. Because you take out a ceiling and the building will stand, but if you take out the wall, it will fall. My whole thing is take out the wall […]

“MÉBÉT” is breaking the trend of child marriages in Gambia and inspiring world-wide with its message

Watch “MÉBÉT” until 2/28 on our festival platform, REBECCA MARTIN: How did you come to this story/film? JAMA JACK: I wrote the story in 2012. At the time, I was a student studying for my undergrad degree in Morocco. One of my outlets for navigating […]

Chaz Ebert moderates Black Female Filmmaker Renaissance Panel with Channing Godfrey Peoples, Numa Perrier, Christine Swanson, Ashley O’Shay, and Sanicole

Here is a throwback to a panel discussion that was part of our 2020 Inaugural Short Film Fest that took place 8/6/20 – 8/9/20. The panel will discuss the powerful cinematic stories by Black female filmmakers in 2019 and 2020, in the midst of the […]

Kyra Jones’ directorial debut sheds new light on sexual assault in “Go to the Body”

Kyra Jones is a force bubbling up in the industry. Her directorial debut “Go to the Body” (which is aiming for a 2023 release), has been winning pitch after pitch contest (Chicago International Film Festival, Screencraft), along with raising over $20K on its GoFundMe page. […]