The IBFF's Back Again 

On March 14, the Independent Black Film Festival is back for year four and a five day run. Although the festival has scaled back from last year's ambitious nine day expansion, this year will still screen over 40 shorts, features and documentaries about the African Diaspora.

From the locally produced Positive about a 13-year-old dealing with the fallout when AIDS affects his family to Rocking Meera, a hip hop comic adventure, the fest's goal is to give independent black filmmakers an opportunity to put their work on display.

This year has also seen a dramatic increase in workshops and programs. There's both an director's boot camp and an actors workshop at Atlantic Station Studios on Friday. What may interest quite a few filmmakers and producers is Saturday's budgeting and scheduling workshop.

Local filmmaker Amy McGary (Adventures of Ocie Nash, Crystal River) is leading the workshop that will go over the basics (entering schedule data, creating a breakdown sheet and producing schedules) of using Movie Magic Scheduling and Movie Magic Budgeting software. Cost is $75 and should be well worth the investment.

Oscar winner (2006) Tsotsi and Oscar nominee (2007) Binta and the Great Idea both screened at last year's fest and this year the festival will feature another high profile screening with Pride featuring Terrence Howard. The special screening will be on Thursday, March 15 at Landmark Theatres Midtown Art Cinema.

Of course, what festival wouldn't be complete without parties and the IBFF will be holding it down at The Blue Room, Verve and Compound, with the closing night party at Taboo Bistro & Bar II.

Returning to the Carter Center, Ty Hodges and Meagan Good will host the IBFF FADE IN awards show, which will air on Comcast's ON DEMAND.

"The Independent Black Film Festival is excited about this new opportunity for audiences to experience the festival in a completely different way," said Festival Director Assante Addae.

For a full list of screenings, panels and workshops visit http://indieblackfest.org/

Capsule Previews

Let's Talk
Director Michelle Coons

This story about sex and love in the time of HIV is too earnest in its intentions. However it has to be said that if the current statistics weren't so grim this short's advocacy wouldn't be so necessary.

Essence and Maurice are two erudite professionals navigating the early days of their relationship, which is on the verge of turning intimate. Voicing her concerns, Essence asks Maurice to take an AIDS test together. Offended that Essence doesn't believe his last test was negative Maurice balks. For Essence, her unease has little to do with Maurice's veracity and more with the central conceit that potentially life changing steps require forethought and personal responsibility. Blind faith is a romantic abstract that offers no protection from stupid decisions. 

As I said, a bit too earnest, yet writer-director Coons raises some valid questions and, all too briefly, takes to task some of the problems that currently exist in Black America: the DL brotha myth and homophobic sisters to name a few.

Tupac is Not Dead
Director Chad Doreck

Few rap artists have had their images replicated so often as Tupac. Although he died a legend, Tupac's musical career was effectively short, his film career, with only six films completed at the time of his death, even more truncated. Constantly, even in the midst of legal and emotional maelstroms, redefining himself, it's his brevity that most likely sealed his place in history. In hip hops four decades existence, few personalities were so openly flawed or so openly defiant.

Eleven years after his murder folks still refuse to believe that Tupac could be killed. This short comedy plays with that notion as Julia tries to convince her roommate Carla that her obsession with Tupac is doing more harm than good.

Although directed by a man, TiND was written by a woman Tracey Ali. Tupac was and has been tagged as misogynistic, songs "Dear Mama" and "Brenda's Got a Baby" notwithstanding. TiND illustrates that Tupac's legacy and message is far reaching and still resonates and that his fan base was no more monolithic than he was.

Black Studies, USA
Director Niyi Coker

There are multiple tracks that a documentary can take. One is to follow its subject(s) and to reveal the how, carefully deconstructing events to create a historical timeline. Another is to concern itself with the what, ignoring chronology to explore cultural and political context.

Coker chose the later route, expounding on the turbulent climate in which students and professors at universities and colleges across the United States demanded formal programs exploring the history and cultures of Africa and her decedents.

While more schools have integrated Black Studies programs into their curriculum, what's not often focused on is how acrimonious and dangerous the end of the Civil Rights era was for many students. Branded communists and dissidents, many of the African American students were ostracized and ignored by reluctant administrations and fearful local governments.

What Black Studies reminds us that since the Civil Rights and the Vietnam eras understanding how events can impact institutional memory and collective emotions still isn't America's strong point.

Masizakhe: Let Us Build Together
Scott Macklin

These past few years several high profile movies about Africa have been released to theatres. Blood Diamond and Catch a Fire being the two most recent films. What nearly of all them have in common is their focus, some would even say obsession, with the past.

South Africa's system of apartheid was dismantled in 1994, but its economic and cultural impact is still very much in evidence. The memories of brutality and segregation into artificial classifications such as Coloured, Black, Asian and White still reverberate.

Macklin's Masizakhe is about South African poets, musicians and artists who are striving to reclaim, redefine and repurpose. This is a film about the present and not about the past.

Watching Masizakhe I could only see parallels to Atlanta's current art scene and the film scene in particular. How do filmmakers reclaim, redefine and repurpose independent filmmaking? How do they make an impact even in a time when the most turbulent days are behind them, yet the problems and concerns that marked those tumultuous times remain?

Saturday Night Life
Director Ana DuVernay

Stories about struggling single mothers more often than not have a fatalistic core. Miniature polemics, also know as scenes, are awkwardly strung together to create the illusion that an audience is witnessing one woman's journey. The end result either to pay homage to the power of the feminine, or to chastise the audience for their blindness and lack of support. By film's end the viewer has wallowed in a cinematic funk thick and heavy. What semblance of life the film may have has been reduced.

In Saturday Night a mother does struggle with depression and the weight of taking care of her three children, but writer and director Duvernay concerns herself not with the depression but how the mother copes. Taking the ordinary and transforming into the extraordinary.

Of the sampling I was handed, this affecting film was my favorite. It portends a future of independent black film that takes risks, attempting to tell old stories in new ways and with deeper insight.

Charles Judson is a local screen & comic book writer and a regular contributor and film critic for CinemATL.