The 2nd Annual New Voices in Black Cinema Festival Debuts at BAMcinèmatek

Beginning Thursday, February 16, through Monday, February 20, ActNow Foundation, in conjunction with BAMcinématek and NYC Council Member Letitia James, present New Voices in Black Cinema, the second annual five-day festival reflecting the wide spectrum of views and themes within the African Diaspora community in Brooklyn and beyond. 

This year’s festival lineup features narrative films that challenge viewers’ notion of identity, relationships, and world-view:

The Tested (2010 – screening Feb. 17 & 19), starring Aunjanue Ellis (Ray, The Help), examines how a life-shattering tragedy sends a mother, her son, and a tortured police officer on vastly different paths toward redemption and understanding, while The American Dream (formerly known as Make A Movie Like Spike) (2011 – Feb. 17) follows an aspiring filmmaker’s attempt to capture the last 36 hours before he and his best friend are shipped off to Afghanistan.   

Brooklyn-based filmmakers examine young urban romantic relationships in Single Hills (2011 - Feb. 18), about a writer battling his fear of commitment while trying to hold onto a longtime love, and the work-in-progress Let’s Stay Together (2011 – Feb. 19) which follows a African-American families in crisis as they navigate relationships, identity, culture and parenthood and is also produced by actress & model YaYa DaCosta. 

The relationship theme continues with The Three Way, a dramatic-comedy sparked when a terrible misunderstanding between a troubled couple erupts when a surprise male visitor arrives at their front door, and in Lesson Before Love, the story of four unfulfilled singles' journey towards finding love while trying to find themselves along the way. 

The narrative selection culminates in a special screening of Theodore Witcher’s Love Jones (1997—Feb. 19), the latest in ActNow’s New Black Classics section.  This “romantic and erotic and smart,” (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times) love story starring Larenz Tate, Nia Long and Isaiah Washington, introduced worldwide audiences to Chicago’s sexy poetry and jazz scene and has become an undeclared classic to modern Black film audiences until now.  

Featured documentaries show the struggle of how African-Americans both define and present themselves.  Infiltrating Hollywood: The Rise And Fall of The Spook Who Sat By The Door (2011 – Feb. 18) follows the intensity surrounding the making of "the most radical of the blaxploitation films of the '70s"(Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader) Sam Greenlee’s 1973 political satire revolution movie The Spook Who Sat By The Door, and Greenlee’s battle to stop the FBI from repressing it. 

From Fatherless to Fatherhood (2011 – Feb. 18) flips the trend of Black-male family abandonment by showing how various men who grew up fatherless fight to raise their children in stable, positive-male households. 

Taking identity internationally, The Furious Force of Rhymes (2011 – Feb. 18), explores how hip-hop music has moved from the ghettos of NYC to the homes of oppressed Israeli Jews, East German skinheads, West Africans in France, and others as tools of expression and liberation, and Sneaker Stories (2011 – Feb. 18), reveals how sneaker culture dazzles and effects three basketball players each in Brooklyn, Vienna and Accra. 

Short films play a significant part of the festival starting with the ‘A Matter Of Time’ (Feb. 19) set of compelling short films exploring the idea of how past events affect present circumstances, anchored Jerry LaMothe's The Tombs, about a Brooklyn man who maintains his innocence throughout a three-day journey through New York's infamous central booking jail system. 

Beside film screenings, kicking off the festival is Jumping the Entertainment Hurdles, a legal panel and networking event featuring entertainment attorneys, agents and working actors who answer filmmakers’ most common questions regarding rights, contracts, agreements, and the attorney/agent role.

On February 18^th, veteran casting agent Winsome Sinclair will facilitate One on One with Winsome & Friends a one-hour panel and Q&A highlighting how actors can make themselves more attractive to casting directors, film directors and managers and learn how to truly become more valuable to the business and to themselves.