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Section B
October 28, 2023 @ 2:30 pm - 4:15 pm
Confirmation
Writer: Nana Duffuor
Directed by: Nana Duffuor
Producer: Yaél Bermudez
Narrative, 11:49
Maame is a God-fearing mother who wants nothing but the best for her son, Kojo. But when he befriends an out and proud, expressive young man in their church, Maame must confront her fear of accepting Kojo’s burgeoning sexual identity or risk losing him.
Sunday Dinner
Director/Writer: Monique Needham
Producer: Kashif Boothe
Narrative, 18:30 min.
On paper, life for Maya looks perfect: an athlete, popular, has a loving family, and is head over heels for her girlfriend Jasmine. However, she’s about to risk it all by inviting Jasmine around to Sunday Dinner. With the help of her grandmother, with whom she shares a special bond, will dinner with her quirky family go smoothly, or will they scare Jasmine off?
Ring Shout Let The Circle Be Unbroken
Writers: Olubayo Jackson, Christopher Miles, Iyabo Kwayana
Producer/Director: Olubayo Jackson
Documentary, 17 min.
The exploration of sacred dance in Africa and diaspora leads a NYC teacher on a worldwide journey to reconnect severed cultural ties. Her quest to document the Ring Shout, an age-old praise dance rooted in African Spiritual Traditions leds her to a rural Georgia museum where she discovers a long lost branch of her family and her Gullah Geechee roots. There she must decide if she will honor her elder cousin’s dying wish and embrace the mantle of carrying his legacy and these vanishing traditions forward.
With Woman
Producer/Director: Mia Harvey
Producer: Mia Harvey
Documentary, 27:45 min.
The long-established tradition of African-American home-birth midwifery has been outlawed in the State of Illinois. At the same time, Black women suffer massively disproportionate maternal mortality in US hospital settings. ‘With Woman’ follows Star, a Black, direct-entry midwife, who has taken up the cause of providing Black women with home-births. Star guides Raven through her last month of her pregnancy, from prenatal visits to the astonishingly intimate and agonisingly perilous experience of her birth on the kitchen floor. Felony charges and being separated from her four children are at risk for Star if there is a poor outcome for mother or baby. Through intimate observational black and white footage, the film documents an act of both defiance and radical self-empowerment by Black women—mothers and midwives—in a country so hostile to their very existence.