Celebrating the diversity of Black cinematic brilliance, the 17th-annual Seattle Black Film Festival (SBFF) begins Friday, July 10, and runs through Sunday, July 12. Hosted by LANGSTON, a hub for Black arts and culture in the Central District, this year’s festival will be presented online for the first time, in partnership with the independent film screening and music platform, Couch-a-thon. It comes three months after the festival was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Creatives need their works to be shown more than ever and to connect with other filmmakers telling Black stories. We feel the acute need [to show] solidarity and amplify voices,” explains SBFF Director Andrea Stuart-Lehalle. “This is really an important moment for Black creatives, so I’m really happy we found a way to keep our platform going.”
On Sunday June 30, 17 high school and 18 middle school graduates and their families from all over the greater Seattle area celebrated their educational achievements at the 4th Annual Black Graduation for Middle School and High School students at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute.
Nothing really beats seeing a child’s eyes light up when they see Santa Claus, or even seeing a child with the opposite reaction, bursting into to tears after being forced to sit on the lap of some chubby, bearded man in a red suit. The secular part of modern Christmas is for children and for the memories we have of our own childhoods around this time of year.
Have you seen the film Moonlight? It’s playing all around town right now and well worth seeing. It left me hankering for the annual African American Film Festival. Because of the transitions happening at Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute (LHPAI), the Festival didn’t happen last spring, so my hunger for films “by us, for us” went unsatisfied. The good news: there’s a mini-festival happening on Thanksgiving weekend at LHPAI to hold us until next spring, when the full Festival can return.Continue reading What’s Up With Langston?→
Amplifying the Authentic Narratives of South Seattle
