African-American Film Festival Is Call to ‘Raise Your Voice’
The Southampton African American Museum will present Raise Your Voice, a four-day festival of films, jazz, and spoken word, beginning next Thursday at 6 p.m. with a screening of “Fruitvale Station” at the Southampton Arts Center.
A program of spoken word and jazz, including performances by Charles Certain and his Certain Moves Jazz Band and the Grammy Award-winning hip-hop artist J. Ivy, will take place Friday, Oct. 3, at 7 p.m. at the Southampton Cultural Center.
According to the festival organizers, Brenda Simmons, the museum’s executive director, and Nigel Noble, an Oscar-winning film director and museum board member, “The common thread linking the film offerings is a clarion call to the community to ‘Raise Your Voice.’ ”
“Fruitvale Station,” which won both the Grand Jury Prize for dramatic feature and the Audience Award for United States dramatic film at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, is based on a true incident — the shooting death of Oscar Grant, an unarmed 22-year-old African-American from the San Francisco Bay Area, by a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer on New Year’s Day, 2009.
The Oct. 4 programs begin at 1 p.m. with “The Trials of Muhammad Ali,” which draws on archival footage and interviews with Ali, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Wilt Chamberlain, and others to show how the champion boxer risked his freedom and fortune to follow his conscience.
A second documentary, “Porgy and Bess: An American Voice,” will screen at 2:45. Directed by Mr. Noble, the film details the history of the George Gershwin opera and of DuBose Heyward’s original novel, “Porgy,” and their impact on African-American culture, illuminated in part by interviews with Maya Angelou, Ruby Dee, Diahann Carroll, and Billy Taylor.
In 1965, Frank De Felitta produced a documentary for NBC television that included an interview with Booker Wright, an African-American waiter at an all-white restaurant in Mississippi. Wright spoke frankly about racism and his treatment at the restaurant, with terrible consequences. Raymond De Felitta revisits his father’s film and the community where Wright lived. “Booker’s Place: A Mississippi Story” will be shown on Oct. 4 at 4:30.
“Belle,” a drama inspired by the true story of Dido Elizabeth Belle, the illegitimate mixed-race daughter of a Royal Navy admiral, will be shown that evening at 7. The film stars Tim Wilkinson, Emily Watson, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw as the young woman caught between two different cultures.
The Oct. 5 slate will start at 2 p.m. with a program of short films, followed at 3:15 by “We Still Live Here,” a documentary about the cultural revival of the Wampanoag tribe of southeastern Massachusetts, who have raised their voices to say in their native tongue, “As Nutayunean” (We still live here).
The festival will close with “Life’s Essentials With Ruby Dee,” which includes interviews with Dee, her husband, Ossie Davis, and Alan Alda, Harry Belafonte, and Danny Glover. Directed by the grandson of Dee and Davis, Muta’Ali Muhammad, the film shows how the filmmaker’s grandparents helped guide his quest for love, art, and activism.
Tickets to individual films are priced at $10. Donations of $25 are suggested for spoken word and jazz. A package of all films and spoken word and jazz is $100, while $150 includes an exclusive V.I.P. reception with the film producers.