This must be the season for film festivals. From the Northwest Film and Video Festival to the amateur porn festival HUMP!, the past few months have been heaven for film geeks. This week is no exception as the Portland African American Film Festival joins the herd and takes on an underrepresented genre.
The festival is designed to provide an introduction to the history of African-American film. A different theme runs in each of the four theaters that will be hosting the festival. The hope is to help viewers put modern African-American film into historical context.
The St. Johns Theater & Pub will focus on the classics, with old goodies like Cabin in the Sky, while the Bagdad Theater will run contemporary social films. At the Mission Theater, you’ll find progressive African-American films featured, two of which are Spike Lee productions. The Kennedy School will show films focused on black exploitation, including that immortal standard of the 1970s, Shaft.
It’s important to note that all these theaters sell tickets at $3 and, even more importantly, they all sell beer. This means that, as you lick up that delightful pint of ale and sit lopsided on your thick wallet, you’ll appreciate this taste of African-American history and culture even more.
It might be wise to catch up on these classic films this year because the theme will change by 2010. The festival this year is intended to be an introduction to the genre, preparing the audience for an integration of independent film in the years to come.
The festival’s founder and executive director, Ron Craig, hopes that this year’s films provide a strong foundation for what is to come in the future of the event.
“We wanted to establish ourselves as a film festival [this year], but the goal is to make it an independent film festival,” Craig said. “I had to go out and do old films first to give people a foundation for what African-Americans have done to contribute to this art form.”
Craig has already begun collecting independent films for next year’s festival.
In addition to traveling the world as a filmmaker, Craig has spent the past three years running the Astoria International Film Festival, which took place last month. He is excited to showcase African-American film for the first time—a genre that he feels has been underrepresented.
The festival kicks off this Friday at the Bagdad Theater with an old classic, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, in which Katharine Hepburn and Sidney Poitier star as a mixed-race couple who find themselves facing their own underlying racial prejudices. Released in 1967, the film played an important historic role in dealing with issues of race in film.
In addition to tackling tough racial issues, the films featured this weekend supply an essential aspect of African-American culture: music. With tunes by great African-American singers and songwriters from the Marvelettes and the Miracles to renowned jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, the music found in these films is as timeless as the flicks themselves.