A newbie's guide to the 27th Roxbury International Film Festival
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Q.
Thanks for taking the time to chat, and congratulations on the festival's 27th anniversary.
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A.
It's pretty crazy. You don't even think about the years, you know — you just keep doing it. And then you look back and say, 'Wow! How did we got to this point?'
Q.
What is the festival's mission?
A.
Our mission is to celebrate people of color around the world, and to give opportunities for emerging and established filmmakers to share their vision and their voice.
Four Women of Gulu Town.
Pauline Greenlick
Q.
So what does that mean? Is it just filmmakers of color?
A.
No, it's helping to support those filmmakers who are creating a more diverse vision of people of color. That vision can be celebratory, or can introduce us to people we didn't know before. We're helping to lift up those stories. That's what our focus has always been over the past 27 years.
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Q.
How has the festival evolved since its first year? Has it been shaped by ideas from attendees and filmmakers,
or film topics?
A.
For starters, the quality of filmmaking has changed, which is great. And when we started the festival, there were filmmakers from MassArt whose films were not getting into festivals. Back in the 1990s, those festivals were only interested in urban dramas, and Black film is not a monolith. So we also accepted love stories and experimental films that were being rejected by other festival programmers because they didn't understand them. In the earliest days of Rox Film, there weren't a lot of Black film festivals, so we wanted to give people an opportunity.
Initially, we focused on local filmmakers. Then we expanded to people who wanted to bring their films to our festival. 27 years later, it's exciting to see that 40 percent of this year's entries are from local filmmakers. Some of these are from people who grew up going to the festival, or who were actors in a film that played here. Others were just film lovers who created their own production studios to contribute to this Black and brown ecosystem of media makers.
We're seeing how they've grown up to become filmmakers telling stories that are really impactful for their communities. It's something we're really excited about celebrating.
Q.
For submissions, is there a cut-off on runtime or any restrictions on style?
A.
There's a cut-off for feature films of two hours. The main reason for that is, when we curate, we put shorts with features. We have a great short on basketball paired with 'Rap Dixon: Beyond Baseball,' a feature-length film about the Negro Leagues.
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Last year, Boston magazine [named] us
Q.
I say this all the time: Regardless of runtime, shorts ARE still movies!
A.
Exactly! And this year we have a ton of shorts. Many of them are by local filmmakers.
Q.
Regarding the shorts: You have several programs grouped by topic. Are those topic buckets consistent or do they change from year to year based on your submissions?
A.
Every year the themes change.
But every year, there are always relationship and sports-themed shorts. There's a great program on reparations this year as well.
Faith Ringgold and Mary Baxter in 'Paint Me a Road Out of Here.'
Heather Woodfield
Q.
Your opening night film, '
installed at Rikers Island. How did you come to select that as the opener?
A.
It wasn't originally scheduled that way. Our festival always opens on a Thursday, and we never do screenings on Juneteenth because of all of the other events that day. But I couldn't wrap my head around opening that film on the festival's first Friday, because that's always a great night for the relationship shorts. So I decided we just have to be part of the ecosystem of Juneteenth. It's a free screening because the museum is free that day. People know Ringgold through her decades of artwork, but the film provides so much more detail.
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How great is it to use the opportunity through film to tell deeper stories of our heroes? It's the same as what we're doing with the tribute to Frank Silvera [on June 26].
Q.
The actor from Kubrick's 'Killer's Kiss?' Sorry, I'm a noirista, so I had to ask.
A.
Yes! Uncle Frank is my great-uncle. We talk about Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte as pioneers, but we don't talk about Silvera. People think his life started in New York City, but he was working here in Boston at the Negro Theater back in 1935. We want to showcase this history, because even historians like Ruben Santiago-Hudson were surprised when I told them of Uncle Frank's achievements here in Boston.
Q.
I'm a newbie to this festival, so I'm intrigued by the Daily Script Reads and the Filmmaker Hangouts sections you have every day. What are those about?
A.
The Daily Script read allows local writers to submit their new screenplays and we spend a lunch hour listening to them. We invite the writers and we cast it with local actors. Three years ago, local filmmaker David Curtis had his script read, and the film he made screens as
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As for the Hangouts: There used to be a great festival in Bermuda that I attended every year, and they had these Filmmaker Hangouts where, after a film, people would go to a restaurant and chat with filmmakers. It's the whole networking thing, and it brings business to local venues, so I adopted it.
We are not a hierarchical festival. The whole point of Rox Film is to give a platform for attendees to meet other people and have discussions about the films.
The Roxbury International Film Festival runs from June 19-27 at various Boston venues. Tickets and scheduling can be found
.
Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.
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