Film, Jazz, and Spoken Word
This year’s African American Film Festival, which will feature a stage play, spoken word performances, and live jazz as well as movies, will take place from next Thursday through Oct. 4 at the Southampton Arts Center on Job’s Lane. The festival is presented by the Southampton African American Museum, whose mission is “to promote an understanding and appreciation of African American culture.”
The festival will open next Thursday at 6:30 p.m. with the East End premiere of “Martin, Malcolm, and Me,” a play by J.D. Lawrence, a playwright, actor, director, comedian, vocalist, and film producer. The play is the story of a young black man whose involvement in a violent protest brings him face-to-face with two well-dressed men, Martin and Malcolm, who befriend him and take him on a historical, educational journey. Tickets are $30 in advance, $20 for children, $35 at the door, $25 for children, and a question-and-answer session will follow the play.
“Sing Your Song,” which will take place Friday, Oct. 2, from 6 to 10 p.m., will feature spoken word and live jazz performances by Cheryl Pepsii Riley, an R&B singer; J. Ivy, a poet from HBO’s “Def Poetry Jam” and a Grammy Award winner; Tarrey Torae, a two-time Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, and Charles Certain and the Certain Moves jazz quartet. Tickets cost $30 in advance, $35 at the door.
Four feature films celebrating iconic African American artists who helped change the political landscape of the United States will be shown on Oct. 3, starting at 1 p.m. with “Soundtrack for a Revolution,” which tells the story of the civil rights movement through the music it engendered.
“Marvin Gaye: What’s Going On,” a 90-minute documentary about the incomparable artist produced for the PBS “American Masters” series, will be screened at 2:30, followed at 4:15 by “Half Past Autumn: The Life and Work of Gordon Parks,” a portrait of the photographer, novelist, journalist, poet, musician, and filmmaker by Craig Laurence Rice. The film’s line producer, Bruce Nalepinski, an East Hampton resident, will take questions after the showing.
“All Me: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert,” which was included in the 2013 Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival, will be shown at 7:15 that night. Mr. Rembert, who survived prison, an attempted lynching, and seven years on Georgia chain gangs to emerge as a successful artist with a retrospective organized by the Hudson River Museum, will take part in a discussion with the film’s producer, Vivian Ducat, after the screening.
“Julian Bond: Reflections From the Frontlines of the Civil Rights Movement” will open the Oct. 4 program at 1:30 p.m. A panel discussion on the contributions to the movement by Mr. Bond, who died in August at the age of 75, will include three civil rights experts, Natalie Byfield, Carol Spencer, and William Pickens III. “Marley,” Kevin Macdonald’s documentary about the musician and revolutionary Bob Marley, will be shown at 2:45, and “Bessie,” an HBO movie starring Queen Latifah as Bessie Smith, will conclude the festival at 6:30.
Tickets to each film are $12 in advance, $15 at the door, except for “Bessie,” which will be free. Tickets for all programs are available at southamptonafricanamericanmuseum.org/10th-annual-african-american-film-festival.