Chadwick Boseman and I in front of the Thurgood Marshall statue in Baltimore.
Chadwick Boseman and I appeared at the NAACP convention in Baltimore to host a special preview of MARSHALL, who founded the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
The journey begins with an arrival at the Thurgood Marshall Airport. Which, in my opinion, needs a statue of Thurgood.
Very exciting to the Marshall poster on display in a movie theater!
Chadwick charms the audience.
Modern day civil rights hero Marilyn Mosby talks about her impressions of the film.
Nick and Marilyn Mosby with myself and host Roland Martin after the screening.
Here’s a clip from the Q&A from an audience member.
NAACP’S Robin Harrison, Chadwick Boseman, Marilyn Mosby and Roland Martin after the screening.
The audience loved the trailer for the film.
Chadwick gave a brilliant and challenging speech in his keynote address at the closing of the NAACP convention.
The crowd burst into applause throughout.
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MARSHALL is screening at the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival as the opening night film on Tuesday. Sorry, it’s already sold out.
By Hannah LaClaire / [email protected]
Now in its 15th year, the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival ayAfricfestival, which runs Monday through Aug.12, will showcase documentaries, features and short films, the majority of which have been made by and star African Americans, according to organizers.
“Marshall” is about a landmark case in the career of Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court justice. “Detroit” tells the story of three African-American young men who were murdered at a hotel during the Detroit riots in 1967. “Crown Heights” is about a man wrongfully convicted of murder and his friend’s quest to prove his innocence.
These three based-on-real-life movies are just three of more than 50 films that will be featured in this year’s Runshoot Filmworks’ Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival.
Now in its 15th year, the festival, which runs Monday through Aug.12, will showcase documentaries, features and short films, the majority of which have been made by and star African Americans, according to organizers.
When it first began, husband-and-wife team Floyd and Stephanie Rance noticed that Martha’s Vineyard was a “great place for art, film, and culture for the African-American community,” says Kelley Jackson, MVAAFF publicity director.
If you go
What: Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival
When: Monday through Aug. 12
Where: Centered at Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center, 100 Edgartown Road, Oak Bluffs, unless otherwise noted
Admission: $10-$20, plus various passes and packages available
Tickets and information: mvaaff.com
She referred to the island as “a friendly place for people of color” and said people on the island are typically “really open to all kinds of art.”
The aim was to start just a small film festival, “but it has grown exponentially every year,” Jackson says, with several thousand visitors expected this summer.
One of the festival’s main attractions, and its “signature event,” is the “Color of Conversation” series, which will include a number of moderated talks led by and featuring prominent people in the field, often accompanied by film clips and screenings.
The opening night film, “Marshall,” will screen at 7 p.m. Tuesday at The Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center, 100 Edgartown Road, Oak Bluffs. After the screening, there will be a conversation with producer Reginald Hudlin (“Django Unchained”).
Director Spike Lee has been a longtime supporter of the festival, and will be there for a few events, including a screening of clips (at 7 p.m. Aug. 12 at MVPAC), followed by a conversation about his new show “She’s Gotta Have It,” an episodic adaptation of his 1986 film of the same name.
Lee also directed “Rodney King,” a film of the solo show performed by Roger Guenveur Smith, retracing events during the police beating of Rodney King and the Los Angeles riots of 1992, also known as the “Rodney King Riots.” The event will be at 7 p.m. Thursday at MVPAC.
Spotlight screenings also include the films “Detroit” at 4 p.m. Monday, and “Crown Heights” at 8 p.m. Monday, both at MVPAC.
“The Defiant Ones”, directed by Allen Hughes, is a four-part HBO documentary series chronicling the relationship between rapper/record producer Dr. Dre and record producer Jimmy Iovine. The screening of the series (7 p.m. Aug. 11 at MVPAC) will be followed by a conversation with Hughes and Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of the Hutchins Center for African African American Research at Harvard University.
The festival will also include a number of films that are finalists for an HBO Film Competition.
There has been a divide present in Hollywood, with people of color feeling like they are largely underrepresented, prompting the recent social media movement #OscarsSoWhite.
This festival is just one attempt to close that gap, Jackson says, but the festival also strives to be 100 percent inclusive of people of all backgrounds and for all types of art. “We are never exclusive,” she adds.
The festival is “not about looking for approval or acceptance, but (Hollywood representation) is like being at a party you weren’t invited to, which is a feeling everyone can relate to,” Jackson says. “We want to celebrate what artists of color have done, and to open doors for them.”
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After making HOUSE PARTY, BOOMERANG and BEBE’S KIDS I started developing content for TV. I did a pilot for Fox that was a single camera dreamed too ahead of its time. I also did a special that was a back door pilot for HBO called COSMIC SLOP.
It was inspired by a story by Harvard professor Derrick Bell, who created science fiction fables to illustrate his legal lessons. I read a collection of them and got inspired to create a Twilight Zone type series about contemporary social issues. In fact, the original title was Science Friction Fables.
I picked George Clinton as the host because he epitomized the idea of the show. That first episode, THE SPACE TRADERS, really upset people. Even the black employees of HBO thought it should not be aired because it would “give white people ideas”…as if they had not done all this stuff to us already!
The show was not picked up as a series. We shopped it to brand new network UPN, whose boss was moved to tears by the pilot but passed on it, ordering HOMEBOYS FROM OUTER SPACE instead.
The Aliens Have Come for Our Black People – http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2012/03/08/the_aliens_have_come_for_our_black_people.html
The SPACE TRADERS episode has gone on to be taught in college classrooms across the country, and was cited by Sean Hannity during Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign when the GOP was trying to vilify Dr. Bell, who regularly consulted with Fortune 500 companies, as some radical leftist. They would show a clip from the film and reference how much money I gave to the Obama campaign, which made me feel like a success.
Cut to this summer, when cutting edge music producer Flying Lotus has signed George Clinton to a record deal. Lotus and Cinefamily host a tribute to George showing rare videos, career retrospective, etc. My brother Warrington and I with George are there to discuss Cosmic Slop after a rare screening. Great artists like Thundercat and MeShell N’dgeocello are in the audience, as well as our mom, who is the coolest of them all. It’s been a crazy set of retrospectives of my work this year.
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