The American Black Film Festival (ABFF) personifies the glow and energetic spirit of Black creators, and its 27th year felt extremely timely. The featured films, TV shows, shorts, and documentaries exemplified the modern Black experience. The festival draws a global crowd and enhances the international understanding of Black people in the diaspora for its attendees. It is revolutionary. Jeff and Nicole Friday, the founders of the festival, can be found mingling amongst panel goers and top filmmakers in the industry.  This year's festival featured an impressive lineup of screeni ..read more

Ever since Lashana Lynch burst on the scene as the headstrong, unflinching Maria Rambeau in “Captain Marvel” she has cut a defiant image. That sight was only deepened in “No Time to Die” and “The Woman King,” two films that see her reimagining Black women action heroes. But Lynch did not mysteriously arise from the ether. She is a formidable stage actress, with her best work coming in collaboration with playwright debbie tucker green.  One of their most fruitful pairings, "ear for eye," which debuted in 2018 at London’s Royal Court, took on new life with a film adaptation of the staged p ..read more

"Black Barbie: The Documentary," directed and written by Lagueria Davis, is a must see! Vivid colors, thorough data analysis and interviews, and an unblemished storyline anchor the film. The documentary follows the journey of three former workers of Mattel, the company behind Barbie, and the strides they made for the original Black Barbie doll and the Black Barbie dolls following her creation. Beulah Mae Mitchell is the grandmother of Lagueria Davis, and sparked Davis’ inspiration for the film. Mitchell worked as a toy maker and receptionist at Mattel. Kitty Black Perkins is the creator of th ..read more

Editors: Two years ago, Al Chambles elucidated the importance of Kizzmekia Corbett's work on the Moderna vaccine for our readers. He returns this year with something you should know about. “I believe that I can shed some light on why the larger community was silent on the mercury problem in Scarboro. An examination of the location of the stream, the distance to Scarboro and the analysis of soil samples made the existence of a problem seem so terrible ridiculous.” Alfred A. Brooks, Jr., PhD ---------- A serious news reporting error related to the Scarboro Community in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, occ ..read more

In 1970, "Midnight Cowboy," starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Two years after the beloved classic family musical "The Sound of Music" won, how does an X-rated film about a man who aspires to be a male prostitute with rich women, but ends up developing a tender relationship with another downtrodden man, suddenly become an Oscar darling? The documentary "Desperate Souls, Lost City and the Legend of the Midnight Cowboy" attempts to investigate the film's origins and explain how and why this movie resonated with the world the way it did. Wrapped loose ..read more

As major studios adapt to the changing business and cultural landscape, moving into the future all too often means revisiting the past. Few projects embody this phenomenon like the Paramount+ original series “Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies,” which debuted last April. Set at the mythical Rydell High School four years before the events of the film “Grease,” the series was created by Annabel Oakes with Australian filmmaker Alethea Jones as showrunner. It is very much emblematic of the current era, which is defined by legacy studios creating streaming services and desperately seeking original co ..read more

"She’s perfect,” I said, “and I was right." - Tina Turner Two-time Academy Award nominee Angela Bassett was a regular fixture during this year’s awards season for her bravura turn as Queen Ramonda in Marvel/Disney's "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," the blockbuster sequel to the 2018 global box office hit "Black Panther," starring the late Chadwick Boseman.  One of the numerous honors Bassett earned in 2023 was to be included in the Time 100, Time magazine's ranking of the 100 most influential people. Among other plaudits, each of the Time 100 honorees receive a written tribute, typicall ..read more

Popular film genres come and go. It happened to Westerns after dominating the industry from the 1940s to the 1960s, and now it’s happening to the superhero movies that dominated the film industry and set box office records over the last 15 years. They’re being replaced with indie films, and we have the pandemic and streaming to thank for that. On the heels of "Avengers: Endgame" and "Wonder Woman 1984," movie theaters shut down along with the rest of the world in 2020, and the way people watched movies and accessed new content dramatically shifted. The recent box office failures of films like ..read more

We started our extended vacation from the US in the summer of 2021, primarily for the benefit of our four children, and to attempt to fully expose them to a different language and immerse them in a new culture. Academically, we narrowed our selection to two schools in the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica, in Guanacaste. Both schools offered Spanish immersion programs with a mixture of global ex-pat families and students from the local community. We completed the extensive applications for all four children at both schools. However, when it was time for the virtual tour, one school said, "Wait unti ..read more

On the day scheduled for this Black Writers Week interview with independent filmmaker Mark Harris, RogerEbert.com publisher Chaz Ebert lost her voice due to laryngitis and was unable to conduct the interview—about an hour before she asked me to sit in for her. As it turns out, I had recently watched one of his movies, “No Regrets.” It’s one of those fun, feel good movies with an all-Black cast about love, friendship and family that I often look for when I’m not sure what to watch. The cast feels familiar, like they could easily be my real friend group. “No Regrets” stars Monica ..read more