BlackStar Celebrates Filmmaking from the Global Majority
BlackStar Film Festival 2024, August 1–4 in Philadelphia. On stage: Program Director Heidi Saman with filmmakers Yaba Blay, Maame Adjei, Imani Celeste, Devin Jie Allen, and Alia Haju. Photo by Celia Mattison.
Though last week’s BlackStar Film Festival was clustered in just a few theaters on Philadelphia’s Broad Street, the four-day festival was anything but local. Celebrating its thirteenth year as a festival championing the films of the global majority, the fest has become known as a preeminent gathering for international Black and Brown film.
A quintessentially Philly highlight of the festival was Aidan Un’s stunning piece of nonfiction, You Don’t Have to Go Home, but…, an exhilarating, sweaty look at Philadelphia’s rich culture of dance. From the film’s explosive opening coda — a brief but breathless monologue naming dozens of bars and dance halls, many long gone — the quiet Saturday matinee turned into a pulsating nightclub. Looming in the background of the film is the relentless tide of gentrification, but in the meantime, the film is an essential document of dance as an act of collectivism and artistry, and of Philadelphia as a hub of Black culture.
Other highlights of the festival’s documentary selection include Songs from the Hole (dir. Contessa Gayles), which follows James “JJ ’88” Jacobs, who was incarcerated at fifteen for murder. Fifteen years later, James has become a rapper whose music explores the isolation, pain, and grief of his life sentence. An intense meditation on criminal justice, the film uses reenactment, animation, and various forms of media to portray the dark shadow cast by James’ crime and the many facets of his artistry.
Still from Songs from the Hole, dir. Contessa Gayles. Courtesy of BlackStar Film Festival.
As for narrative features, Ishaya Bako’s adaptation of the novel I Do Not Come To You By Chance, a darkly comedic family-drama-cum-heist about a young Nigerian man who is forced to turn to Internet scams to provide for his family, is a can’t-miss. Helmed by stunningly duplicitous performances by Paul Nnadiekwe and Blossom Chukwujekwu, the film is a pitch-black comedy with a perfectly executed ending.
The juried and audience award-winning features were two coming-of-age stories that couldn’t be more different. In After the Long Rains (dir. Damien Hauser), Aisha is a ten-year-old girl living on the Kenyan coast who dreams of sailing across the ocean, despite the disapproval of her tight-knit family. New Zealand comedy Inky Pinky Ponky - The Odd One Out (dir. Ramon Te Wake and Damon Fepuleai, based on Amanaki Lelei Prescott-Faletau’s play Inky Pinky Ponky), the irrepressibly charming Lisa just wants her classmates to accept her as fakaleitī, or a Tongan woman who was assigned male at birth — and maybe get a date to the school dance.
One of the strongest elements of BlackStar is its vibrant shorts programming, which features some of the most unique new and veteran voices in filmmaking. Burnt Milk (dir. Joseph Douglas Elmhirst) is a lyrical meditation about a Jamaican nurse in the UK who quietly narrates her dreams while making a condensed milk pudding. Boat People (dir. Al’lkens Plancher) reimagines the 1991 detention of Haitian refugees by the American government in blistering black and white. Grace (dir. Natalie Jasmine Harris), a gorgeous pastoral set in the 1950s, features a Black teenager in the American South doubting her sexuality and spirituality on the eve of her baptism. There was also plenty of lighter fare: The Flacalta Effect (dir. Rochée Jeffrey) imagines a world where an Ozempic-like drug turns Instagram-ready Angelenos into flesh-eating zombies, while City of Dreamz (dir. Imani Celeste) sees four college friends swapping stories around a proverbial campfire (in this case, a joint).
Still from Burnt Milk, dir. Joseph Douglas Elmhirst. Courtesy of BlackStar Film Festival.
The short documentary programming was equally eclectic. And still, it remains (dir. Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah) won the juried prize for this category. It is a sparse examination of the radioactive sand that lingers from French nuclear tests in the Algerian Sahara and the people affected by the literal remnants of colonization. Also of note is The People Could Fly (dir. Imani Dennison), a warm look at the rollerskating community in Louisville, Kentucky — and of particular interest for anyone who found themselves clicking “add to cart” on a pair of rollerskates in 2020.
BlackStar is a welcome reminder of what truly global artistry looks like, and how exciting the current cinematic landscape is. In a time that has been defined by isolation and collective grief, BlackStar felt like a rare oasis — a weekend to gather and celebrate filmmakers from across the world and very different traditions, but united in a pursuit to keep independent cinema interesting.
BlackStar Film Festival 2024 took place between August 1st and 4th, celebrating over 90 films from 40 countries.
You Might Also Like:
Chellis Baird On Embracing Negative Space
Lost in Time: Serbian Filmmaker Returns to Once-Forgotten Memories
Music for the Eyes: “Crafting the Ballets Russes” at the Morgan Library & Museum
