World-renowned ballerina Misty Copeland stars in her first independently produced short art film, an immersive experience in movement storytelling that highlights intergenerational equity in the community of Oakland, California, featuringnew, original music from Grammy-winning recording artist Raphael Saadiq.
The film will be followed by a short discussion and light refreshments.
Running Time: 28 minutes
Director: Lauren Finerman | Producers: Leyla Fayyaz, Misty Copeland
Free but seating is limited please RSVP.
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Cxffee Black to Africa is a documentary that unearths the origins of the bean that changed the world.
As a part of the Hayti Film Next Level series, spend a pre-Valentine’s Day evening at Hayti to find out about one of the world’s oldest guilty pleasures!
Cxffee Black to Africa is a documentary that unearths the origins of the bean that changed the world.
Synopsis:
A teacher-turned-hip-hop artist is on a mission to reclaim a stolen fruit– coffee– from his motherland of Africa. The only thing standing in his way is a 460 billion dollar industry that has profited off of the backs of his ancestors through the slave trade. When Bartholomew Jones is given a chance to travel to Ethiopia and learn about one of the most important commodities of the 21st century, he packs his bags and returns home.
Filmmaker Bartholomew Jones will be in attendance for an after-screening Q+A.
Note: this is a free event with a suggested donation of $5 in support of Hayti Films.
Hayti Film Next Level presents a screening and talkback of THE HOLLY, a gripping documentary highlighting an embattled Denver community where gentrification, a shooting case, activism and political machinations give way to the city’s ever-rising gang activity. This event will take place Tuesday, December 6, 2022 at 6:30 pm at the Hayti Heritage Center, located at 804 Old Fayetteville Street, Durham NC 27707.
Special guests include director and author Julian Rubenstein, main subject of the film – activist Terrance Roberts, and members of the Durham community. A live talk-back will take place immediately following the screening.
THE HOLLY is based on director Julian Rubenstein’s nationally acclaimed book, The Holly: Five Bullets, One Gun and the Struggle to Save an American Neighborhood.
Durham, NC. August 1, 2022 – Submissions are open for the 28th annual Hayti Heritage Film Festival (HHFF). This legacy anchor program, presented by the Hayti Heritage Center/St. Joseph’s Historic Foundation, attracts filmmakers and enthusiasts alike from the U.S. and beyond.
The 2023 festival runs from March 6-11 and will offer a hybrid of both online and in-person screenings taking place at the historic center located at 804 Old Fayetteville Rd. in Durham, NC.
While the festival traditionally attracts an audience from the American South, its reach has grown to include states outside of the region, and foreign countries. With an emphasis on Black, Southern filmmaking, submissions from the whole of the African diaspora are encouraged, ranging from full-length features to documentaries, shorts to classic films.
About the Hayti Heritage Center and the Hayti Heritage Film Festival
The Hayti Heritage Center preserves and advances the heritage and culture of the historic Hayti community in Durham, NC and the African American experience through programs that benefit the broader community, locally, nationally, and globally. The Hayti Heritage Film Festival, wherein new and veteran artists screen films before a diverse crowd of film enthusiasts, is one of the longest running Black Southern film festivals in the nation.
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On Saturday, June 11th the Hayti Film Next Level series culminates with REBIRTH: HAYTI FILM FORWARD, a fundraiser that will engage local and national funders and partners in establishing a financial foundation for the future.
The program will take place at Hayti Heritage Center from 6-9:30 pm and will consist of,
– VIP Networking Opening Reception (with a VIP ticket purchase),
This month, Hayti Film Next Level series presents two organizations on the leading edge of Black filmmaking. On Friday, May 13th @ 7pm, we present Afro + Projection LAB’s latest curated program of Black Experimental Cinema. And then on Saturday, May 14th, Black Film Space offers up one of its signature screenwriting workshops.
Afro + Projection LAB
Founded by Devon “Vonnie Quest” Smith, Afro + Projection LAB is an interdisciplinary art program that teaches, engages in, and presents Black Experimental Cinema. Future Film/Video Residency. This month, we present a curated program along with a special talkback with Vonnie Quest.
The Afro+Projection Lab presents Stewarding Cinematic Spaces of Care. These videos engage with questions that arise at the convergence of archival practices, gestures of care, and the moving image. Stewarding Cinematic Spaces of Care uses Gil Z. Hochberg’s, archival imagination as a thematic link between the five films in the program. Each filmmaker not only engages with the archive(s), but reimagines its function for alternative futures.
Filmmakers:
Jasmine Best – A Wilmington Doll
Tatiana Garnett – These Hands Lay Open
Cydnii Wilde Harris – Cotton
Amir George – Optimum Continuum
Vonnie Quest – Remnants of A Room
@afroprojectionlab
Black Film Space
Black Film Space is a non-profit 501 (c) 3 organization committed to building a community of filmmakers from the African Descent through skill enhancing and networking events. We are a collective of directors, screenwriters, producers, cinematographers, actors and other media makers that want to develop genuine connections and grow with fellow Black creatives.
During this Zoom meeting, we will read one 10 to 15-page script and offer constructive feedback in an open forum setting. Script submissions are accepted on a first-come, first-serve basis. You must RSVP before we can confirm that your script will be read.
E-mail: events@blackfilmspace.com to have your script read after you RSVP.
March 25, 2022. Durham, NC – Drive-ins return to the line-up in April for the Hayti Film Next Level series. These screenings are in partnership with the Lincoln Community Health Center and will take place in the parking lot at 1301 Fayetteville St. in Durham, NC.
Friday, April 8th @ 7:30pm – Many Fires This Time: We the 100 Million
Many Fires This Time: We the 100 Million is a poetic documentary about the 1 in 3 Americans and counting, living in economic insecurity. It follows the journey of poet and activist A Scribe Called Quess? as he connects with fellow activist poets and the communities they represent from Oakland to Chicago to Kentucky to his hometown of New Orleans.
Along the way, we glimpse into the worlds of everyday people fighting for equity and justice in issues ranging from housing and gentrification to police violence, to environmental crises and job security, to education, to LGBTQIA equality. In the spirit of the impending fire that James Baldwin prophetically spoke of in this country’s last season of a major uprising, “Many Fires” employs spoken word poetry, choreography, and community interviews, to form a poetic love letter to the many revolutionary struggles aflame in today’s America.
Directed by Jason Foster.
Saturday, April 9th @ 7:30pm Big Chief, Black Hawk
Terrance Williams Jr. aka Big Chief Tee is the Big Chief of The Black Hawk Hunters, a Mardi Gras Indian Tribe that carries on the Mardi Gras Masking Indian tradition. Every year, Big Chief Tee and his tribe create elaborate and beautiful suits, preparing to parade every Mardi Gras morning. It’s already a daunting task, but Terrance succeeds while also being a 10th grader at Isidore Newman High School, as well as an athlete and a band member. This documentary gives us a peek into Terrance’s life, following him as he continues to carry the torch of tradition in the midst of a deadly pandemic and civil unrest due to the killing of black males. In order to explore exactly how Terrance is carrying the torch, Big Chief, Black Hawk also explores some of the history of the Mardi Gras Masking Indian culture, the relationships between Native Americans and African Americans in and around New Orleans, and the changing demographics of New Orleans.
Big Chief, Black Hawk provides a cohesive look into why tradition and culture are so important to the African American community in New Orleans today. Through interviews and storytelling, we look into the past to introduce you to the future, displaying how the past has been passed onto the present.
Directed by Jonathan Isaac Jackson. **Filmmaker will be in attendance.
Purchase tickets for Drive In!
Our drive-ins are back! Watch amazing films while we safely tailgate our way into spring. Still a little cautious? Then screen from the comfort of your own home.
This month, watch leading-edge shorts from around the world. Then experience the pilot episode of an animated series about climate change. Hayti Film Next Level series presents innovations in area of fictional short-form storytelling.
MINE
MINE is an animated series that explores the difficult and worthwhile fight for the community you love.
Set in the near future, siblings Blaze and Mia live in Beauvoda — a community built around a supernatural source of water that influences their livelihood, culture and health. When the water seems to run out during an important coming-of-age ritual, panic ensues and the latent virus of capitalism is unleashed, threatening to undo this utopias’ progress. In order to save their community and their sister, Blalze must learn how to harness the power of the collective to find a cure.
MINE is a part of the Rise-Home Stories project, a groundbreaking collaboration that aims to reimagine the past, present, and future of our communities by transforming the stories we tell about them. In 2018, a group of multimedia storytellers and housing, land, and racial justice advocates came together and began a unique co-creative process. They’ve created a suite of five multimedia narrative projects, including MINE, that speak to the power of abundance and collective action in the face of increasingly toxic narratives of scarcity and individualism while planting a long-term vision for a just future.
**The pilot episode is followed by a panel discussion of the project’s creators.
WHO WILL START ANOTHER FIRE
Dedza Films is a distribution initiative dedicated to curating & facilitating the distribution of films from the next wave with a focus on underrepresented communities and early works of emerging storytellers. WHO WILL START ANOTHER FIRE is Dedza’s first release, featuring nine stories hailing from Nigeria, Uganda, the Philippines, Israel, and more from emerging BIPOC, LGBTQ, and international filmmakers who are defining the future of cinema.
INTRODUCING:
Like Flying (USA)
Directed by Peier Tracy Shen
A young Chinese-American girl navigates her childhood through her parents’ broken relationship.
Family Tree (Uganda)
Directed by Nicole Amani Magabo Kiggundu
A man whose wife has died visits a tree that has special significance to him. He recounts to his son what happened there many years previously.
Troublemaker (Nigeria)
Directed by Olive Nwosu
Obi’s best friend, Emeka, gives him a packet of firecrackers, the boys decide to have some fun. However, things escalate in unexpected ways, as Obi learns for the first time that actions have consequences, and that there are still things he cannot understand.
Polygraph (Israel)
Directed by Samira Saraya
Based on a true story, Yasmine, an openly lesbian Arab nurse living in Tel Aviv, finds out that her lover Or, an intelligence officer in the Israeli army, has been reporting on their relationship.
The Lights Are On, No One’s Home (USA)
Directed by Faye Ruiz
Mar, a trans woman who left home years ago, returns to her old neighborhood to find her childhood home. Upon her return, she’s confronted with the changes that gentrification has brought to the place she once knew so well.
By Way of Canarsie (USA)
Directed by Lesley Steele & Emily Packer
A wandering portrait of an oft-neglected shoreline community, By Way of Canarsie imagines possible futures at odds with a peaceful present. Through brief encounters, observational mise-en-scene, and expressive use of analog film, we begin to understand this predominantly black New York City neighborhood’s shared desires for recognition and respect.
The Rose of Manila (Philippines)
Directed by Alex Westfall
An imagining of the formative years of Imelda Marcos, who, as one half of the Marcos regime, would become infamous for embezzling billions from the country to sustain her extravagant lifestyle.
Slip (USA)
Directed by Nicole Otero
A woman arrives home at the end of a regular day, but as she begins to turn in for the night, she is overcome with a sense of restlessness. Unable to fit inside her own world, she goes back out into the night. Her journey around a mostly vacant city, obscured by darkness, cascades in space and time, away from one feeling and in search of another.
Not Black Enough (USA)
Directed by Jermaine Manigault
A young African-American man struggling to find his identity within his community meets a persuasive relic of the past.
PLEASE NOTE:
This month’s screenings are available online only.
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FREEDOM.
From the political to the personal, the Hayti Film Next Level series presents two films that push the boundaries of human expression.
MARIGHELLA**
1969. Marighella, Brazil’s number one enemy, has no time for fear. On the one hand, a violent military dictatorship, with its heinous crimes of torture and infamous censorship. On the other, an intimidated people. Alongside guerrilleros 30 years younger than him and willing to fight, the revolutionary leader opts for action – all the while trying to keep the promise of reuniting with his son, who he distanced himself from in order to protect.
Directed by Wagner Moura.
**In Portuguese with English subtitles.
THEE DEBAUCHERY BALL
Thee Debauchery Ball is the story of Chicago’s Afro-Futuristic, BDSM, fetish-themed House music party and how it has reshaped the Black social scene and challenged the narratives of Black sexuality.
Directed by David Weathersby
PLEASE NOTE:
This month’s screenings are available online only.
When fiercely independent Monika moves back to New York from Los Angeles, determined to make it this time completely on her own,
the last thing she ever expected was to meet Trent with an open heart and open arms.
SUNDAYS IN JULY takes an intimate look at two lovers navigating the minefield of their egos, fears, and flaws to dive into the most foreign and uncharted territory- true love.
