Boots Riley (right), writer and director of “Sorry to Bother You,” and Brandi Summers, sociologist and assistant professor of African-American Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, in conversation at Grace Street Theater for a post-screening discussion of Riley’s directorial debut (Photo courtesy Afrikana Independent Film Festival)
The Afrikana Independent Film Festival's third annual showing filled downtown Richmond this past weekend with premieres, post-screening talks and an exploration of Richmond's history.
Friday night at the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU, Afrikana premiered Oscar-winning director Barry Jenkins’ film adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel, "If Beale Street Could Talk." The film is a love story between Tish and Fonny and explores what transpires when Fonny is falsely accused of rape and how his family fights for his release, particularly before the birth of his and Tish’s first child.
The film was followed by a discussion with writer Samantha Willis; Tressie McMillan Cottom, professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of the critically acclaimed “Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the U.S.”; and Corey D.B. Walker, now scholar-in-residence for the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology at Virginia Union University.
“Show of hands again for those who have read the [Baldwin] book, again, so I can be critical of the education system,” Cottom said jokingly to the crowd, still stunned by the movie. The film also premiered in New York City and Los Angeles that evening, and Thursday marked 31 years since Baldwin’s death. “I believe in divine timing,” Afrikana founder Enjoli Moon says. Usually held the second weekend in September, this year’s film festival was postponed due to Hurricane Michael.
Afrikana held concurrent film screenings Saturday at galleries throughout the city's Arts District, including films for youth co-hosted by Oakwood Arts and ART 180. People packed 1708 Gallery to see the short film "Stuck," which was written and directed by Richmond native Praheme. “I try to come back [home] often, but I also try to make the work bring me back,” he says.
The film features a couple who get stuck within and to each another while having sex. The characters have to become vulnerable to get unstuck without excessive and embarrassing medical attention. Praheme screened the film at a number of festivals, but Afrikana is special, he says, because the other elements of the festival, such as Sunday’s Untold RVA tour of the Jackson Ward and Blackwell neighborhoods led by Free Egunfemi, make it historic and spiritual.
Saturday evening closed with a screening of writer and director Boots Riley’s "Sorry to Bother You" at the Grace Street Theatre. The film was followed by talk with Riley, led by Brandi Summers, a VCU assistant professor of African-American studies. “The film was really meaningful to me,” said Summers, recalling how she listened to Riley's music on cassette tapes in 1994 in her Honda Civic hatchback — music through which she heard the larger themes of racial inequity, capital and labor.
Riley's film, released this past summer, explores how his central character's life is initially fueled but then is undone by a promotion. Riley wrote the initial script in 2012, and in a 2013 video with Riley's band The Coup in Stockholm, he addressed political organizing and the necessity of “organizing where we work, organizing where we live.” Not just talking about the big issues, he explained in the video to a cheering crowd, “but talking about how people put food on the table and doing that in a radical way.”
Moon says to clear your calendars for the second weekend in September for next year's festival, rain or shine. "When I started Afrikana in 2014 with the monthly Noir Cinema Series,” she says, “one of the things I was super deliberate about was finding spaces in the very quickly changing downtown. It was becoming this arts district but in a city that was 50 percent black, I did not see brown people being represented in this transition that was happening. So I felt like this was a great opportunity to make sure that within these spaces and within this energy of an RVA creative, we understand that there are black people who contribute to this energy as well and to do that in places where we don’t typically create.”
As Richmond continues to make a name itself internationally as an arts scene, Moon says, the festival is a way for out-of-towners to get to know Richmond. "They can walk up and down Broad Street and see our cultural centers, see different people and just see the city at work. I [also] think it’s a nice introduction for Richmonders who are seeing the city change and don’t know where they fit in.”
