The Black Women Film Network held its annual Black Women Film Festival at the Savannah College of Art and Design on June 17-19, 2011. Celebrating its 15th year, the festival showcased several documentary films about African- American women, held workshops about the film industry, hosted a Black Women Book Festival brunch featuring Black female authors and a networking affair featuring Black Entertainment Television’s programming executive.
The festival kicked off with a reception at the Woodruff Arts Center and viewing of films about experiences of African- American women, including “Crime after Crime,” which tells the story of a woman jailed for involvement in her abuser’s murder. Former U.S. Ambassador Andrew Young’s documentary, “Stars Fell on Alabama” was also shown.
The business side of filming included sessions on writing, producing and marketing films. Filmmaker and veteran writer Rhonda Baraka, whose newest film “Trinity Goodheart,” starring Eric Benet, was a keynote panelist for the “How to Write and Produce A Successful Film” workshop. “Trinity Goodheart,” a faith-based drama, premieres in August on the Gospel Music Channel.
The Black Women Film Network’s founder, Sheryl Riley Gripper, shared her story of how the organization began while she was studying film in college.
“I got my master’s in film, and in my film classes, there were no other African-American women and my instructor, a young 26-year-old White man said, ‘We need more stories like yours. Yours are the untold stories. What are you going to do about it?’ So, in 1997, I started the Black Women Film Preservation Project to preserve the voice of African-American women through film,” said Gripper.
“It has evolved into the Black Women Film Network, and today we realized that we need networking opportunities and we need educational opportunities, and we also need faith. So we are here to nurture African American and women, and people – all people who are trying to tell untold stories, who are trying to inspire and who are trying to uplift. In today’s media world, there is so much
negative and we want to be that positive that drowns out some of the negative.”
The Black Women Book Festival Brunch was integrated into the festival since many books are eventually made into feature films. Hosted by 11 Alive’s Donna Lowry, the book festival featured Rachel Vassel, author of “Daughters of Men,” Shanti Das, author of “The Hip Hop Professional (guide for women),” and Ronda Racha Penrice, author of “African American History for Dummies.”
The educational workshop sessions concluded with a panel on financing films and tax credits. The film festival culminated with networking advice from Jaunice Sills, programming coordinator for the program planning, scheduling and acquisitions department at BET Networks in New York. She offered real-world advice to women in pursuit of getting their film picked up by a network.
“It’s really important that you are constantly hustling to make sure it gets into the right hands and in front of the right eyes. It’s always a two-way street. We’re looking for something that will make the network look good, and we’re looking to make money off of it too, and if you feel your project will do that, it’s really important for you to keep trying to get in and it’s important that you use all your avenues to do it, such as Facebook and Twitter, posting things on people’s walls. Just sharing. The more you share, the more you put it out there, the more eyeballs it’s going to hit. Once that buzz starts, that’s how it gets to the networks. If you keep trying to get it out there, someone’s going to notice,” said Sills.
The Black Women in Film Network also provides ongoing events and workshops for its members and scholarships for young women pursuing careers in film. For more information about the Black Women Film Network, go to www.blackwomenfilm.org.