Black Public Media awarded a complete of $610,000 to movie and immersive tasks and creatives at its seventh PitchBLACK Discussion board — the most important pitch competitors for unbiased filmmakers and inventive technologists creating new tasks in regards to the world Black expertise — on the PitchBLACK Awards.
The determine was the very best ever quantity awarded at PitchBLACK. Sponsored by Netflix and PBS, the occasion — held Thursday on the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse at Lincoln Middle — was hosted by Baltimore-based comic Sir Alex and included the presentation of the BPM Trailblazer Award to Emmy-winning filmmaker Sam Pollard.
The winner of the $150,000 movie award was Zenón, a documentary in regards to the lifetime of Puerto Rican fisherman and revolutionary Carlos “Taso” Zenón, who spearheaded protests in opposition to the U.S. Navy’s occupation, exploitation and environmental degradation of his residence, the island of Vieques. Puerto Rican director Juan C. Dávila and producer Camila Rodríguez Estrada accepted the grant for his or her movie about environmental racism on an island the place the vast majority of residents are Black Puerto Ricans. Judges of the PitchBLACK Movie Discussion board have been Chloe Gbai, Chris Hastings and Sabrina Schmidt-Gordon.
Picture Frequency Modulation, an interactive reminiscence broadcasting station investigating pictures, ancestral reminiscence, oral transmission and metaphors of radio applied sciences as websites of risk for the African diaspora, gained a $50,000 immersive challenge award. Its creator is Ethel-Ruth Tawe and producer is Elisha Tawe, and they’re a Cameroonian brother and sister group. The Museum of Black Pleasure: Ring Shouts, Rituals & Rising Indicators by Philadelphia creator Andrea Partitions, obtained a $25,000 immersive challenge award. It’s a four-wall video set up conceived as a cultural embrace, resonating with a multi-media narrative that facilities Black Pleasure because it emerges from historical past, triumphantly, with fashion, creativity and beauty. Judges of the PitchBLACK Immersive Discussion board have been Errol King, Angela Tucker and Jennifer Scott.
The PitchBLACK Discussion board was hosted by promoting futurist Tameka Kee.
“Yearly, PitchBLACK serves as a reminder to our group, and to the broader trade, of the superb pool of expertise in our media making communities,” stated Leslie Fields-Cruz, government director of BPM. “What this yr’s PitchBLACK members share is a dedication to novel storytelling. Their work is modern, enlightening and entertaining, a hopeful harbinger of the way forward for public media.”
The Jacquie Jones Memorial Fund award was introduced to American Sons, a documentary challenge by Andrew J. Gonzales and Laura Varela. The $380,000 award will help the duo in finishing their movie, which follows a cadre of Marines after deployment in Afghanistan as they reunite over the lack of their brother and work to heal from bodily and emotional wounds. The movie is slated for a PBS premiere in 2025. Made doable by the Company for Public Broadcasting, the fund helps makers within the custom of the late Peabody Award-winning director and BPM’s second government director, Jacquie Jones, who helped foster various content material creators. For extra on the Fund, go to https://blackpublicmedia.org/for-media-makers/jacquie-jones-memorial-fund/.
The night featured a Filmmaker Chat between NPR host Brittany Luse and Pollard, who spoke about his celebrated profession, which incorporates acclaimed movies and sequence like Eyes on the Prize, MLK/FBI, Lowndes County and the Street to Black Energy and Mr. SOUL!, and his enhancing of a number of iconic Spike Lee movies. As a part of PitchBLACK, a four-city retrospective of Pollard’s movies and digital screenings runs via Could 5. In-person screenings will happen in Los Angeles (April 27), Santa Barbara (April 30) and Baltimore (Could 3). Some screenings can be adopted by conversations with the filmmaker. The New York screenings have been produced in partnership with ImageNation. For extra data, go to https://blackpublicmedia.org/pitch-black/pb-2024/.
Ethel-Ruth Tawe additionally obtained the Nonso Christian Ugbode (NCU) Fellowship, an award based in 2016 and named after BPM’s late director of digital initiatives to help artistic technologists underneath age 30. The rising star has already obtained the Magnum Basis 2022 Counter Histories Grant-Program for her challenge Picture Frequency Modulation, which competed in PitchBLACK, and in addition was lately chosen by the Worldwide Documentary Movie Competition Amsterdam (IDFA) 2023 DocLab Discussion board. Tawe will obtain a $5,000 award.
With the 2024 PitchBLACK movie and immersive grants, BPM — a Harlem-based nationwide nonprofit which funds and distributes unique content material — has awarded greater than $1.8 million to 23 tasks since launching PitchBLACK in 2015. A few of the tasks chosen in earlier years have gone on to premiere on PBS, WORLD, Create and PBS Digital. Alumni of this system have gone on to provide movie, tv and immersive tasks for PBS, CNN, Showtime, Netflix, HBO, BET, NBC, The CW and extra.
Netflix’s continued help is a part of the corporate’s Fund for Inventive Fairness, a devoted effort to assist construct new alternatives for underrepresented communities inside leisure. Extra help for PitchBLACK comes from the Company for Public Broadcasting; John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Basis; Acton Household Giving; New York Group Belief; New York Metropolis Division of Cultural Affairs; New York State Council on the Arts; Nationwide Endowment for the Arts; Shutterstock; Unity Charitable Fund, a fund of Tides Basis; and Sonder Basis.
For extra data on BPM, go to blackpublicmedia.org. Comply with BPM on social media at comply with the group on Fb and Instagram @blackpublicmedia and watch the PitchBLACK occasions on the BPM YouTube channel.
