{"id":67938,"date":"2014-01-16T07:11:28","date_gmt":"2014-01-16T07:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/0de2709a84.nxcli.net\/0-kjasnb\/2014\/01\/16\/black-films-at-2014-sundance-film-festival\/"},"modified":"2018-12-18T08:37:06","modified_gmt":"2018-12-18T08:37:06","slug":"black-films-at-2014-sundance-film-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackfilm.com\/read\/black-films-at-2014-sundance-film-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Films at 2014 Sundance Film Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

Black Films at 2014 Sundance Film Festival<\/strong>Posted by Wilson Morales<\/p>\n

January 16, 201<\/p>\n

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The last few years at the Sundance Film Festival has produced some great product with critical acclaim. From Ava DuVernay’s Middle of Nowhere, ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’<\/strong> with Oscar nominee Quvenzhane Wallis<\/strong>, to last year’s Ryan Coogler<\/strong>‘s double winner ‘Fruitvale Station,’<\/strong> along with Andrew Dosunmu’s ‘Mother of George,’ Shaka King’s ‘Newlyweeds,’<\/strong> and ‘Blue Caprice’<\/strong> with Isaiah Washington<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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Among the highlighted films premiering at this year’s festival include Justin Simien’s Dear White People, Cutter Hodierne\u2019s Fishing Without Nets<\/strong>, and Noaz Deshe’s White Shadow<\/strong>. Simien was recently named one of Variety\u2019s 10 Director to Watch for 2013.<\/p>\n

The 30th annual Sundance Film Festival start from Jan. 16-26 in Park City, Utah.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here’s a list of films, as compiled by filmgordon.com<\/a><\/strong>, spotlighting people of color, including some shorts, features and world premieres.<\/p>\n

SHORTS<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Afronauts<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s 1969 and the United States are preparing to launch a man into space on Apollo 11. While that event garnered worldwide attention, little did anyone know that on the other side of the world the Zambia Space Academy was also trying to send someone to orbit in Afronauts by Ghanaian writer\/director Frances Bodomo. The cast includes Diandra Forrest, Yolonda Ross and Hoji Fortuna.<\/p>\n

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Best<\/strong><\/p>\n

With his wedding only moments away, a man and his best friend confront their future. Brit William Oldroyd directs from screenwriter Adam Brace\u2019s script. The film stars Jotham Annan and Terry Doe. Best is Oldroyd’s second short film. His first feature film, In Mid Wickedness, has been selected for the Tbilisi International Film Festival<\/p>\n

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The Bravest, the Boldest<\/strong><\/p>\n

Two army casualty-notification officers arrive at the Harlem projects to deliver some news to a grief-stricken mother about her son serving in the war overseas. But whatever it is they have to say, she ain\u2019t willing to hear it. Moon Molson co-wrote and directs this intense drama, which also stars Carlo Alban, Sameerah Luqmaan-Harris, Hisham Tawfiq, Venida Evans and Dante E. Clark<\/p>\n

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The End of Eating Everything<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kenyan-born Writer\/director Wangechi Mutu\u2019s short traces the journey of a flying, planetlike creature navigating a bleak skyscape. This sick soul is lost in a polluted atmosphere without grounding or roots, led by hunger toward its destruction. Singer\/songwriter Santigold stars.<\/p>\n

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Rat Pack Rat<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Sammy Davis Jr. impersonator, hired to visit a loyal Rat Pack fan, finds himself performing the last rites at the boy\u2019s bedside in writer\/director Todd Rohal\u2019s emotional short. Eddie Rouse, Steve Little and Margie Beegle star.<\/p>\n

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Untucked<\/strong><\/p>\n

This documentary explores the iconic \u201cuntucked\u201d jersey worn in 1977 when Marquette University won its first and only national college basketball championship. It was designed by one of Marquette\u2019s players, Bo Ellis, under the fearless leadership of Coach Al McGuire. Marquette alum and actor Danny Pudi makes his directorial debut with this doc.<\/p>\n

FEATURES<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong>Concerning Violence<\/strong><\/p>\n

Three years after his wildly-successful documentary, The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, director G\u00f6ran Hugo Olsson returns to the Sundance Film Festival with a bold, fresh, and compelling visual narrative about the African liberation struggles of the 1960s and 1970s. Concerning Violence combines newly discovered archival material depicting some of the most daring moments in the confrontation with colonial power, accompanied by singer Lauryn Hill\u2019s searing narrative and drawn from psychologist\/philosopher Frantz Fanon\u2019s seminal anticolonial text, The Wretched of the Earth.<\/p>\n

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Dear White People<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the films that is getting the most pre-festival buzz is this satirical story about a biracial student at a prestigious university whose actions on her radio show set a series of dominoes that skewer everything from our views on race, how we are perceived by the mass media, while poking fun at reality TV in this thought-provoking film. With tongue planted firmly in cheek, writer\/director Justin Simien makes an auspicious debut with Dear White People, a witty and whip smart satire about black militancy, postracial fantasies, and the commodification of blackness. Nothing is black and white in this playful portrait of race in contemporary America. Stephanie Allain-Bray produces and the film stars Tyler James Williams (Everybody Hates Chris), Tessa Thompson (For Colored Girls), Teyonah Parris and Brandon Bell.<\/p>\n

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Difret<\/strong><\/p>\n

This film follows a common practice and the oldest tradition in Ethopia, yet foreign to most Westerners \u2013 abduction into marriage. A young girl\u2019s defiant stand finds her on the stand for her life. Aided by a tenacious young lawyer, her defense shines an uncomfortable spotlight, while putting both of them on a collision course between enforcing civil authority and abiding by customary law. Beneath the layer of polite social customs, an aggressively rooted patriarchy perpetuates inhospitable conditions for women in this engrossing and significant film, based on a real-life story by Ethiopian-born writer\/director Zeresenay Berhane Mehari, making his feature-film debut; Meron Getnet and Tizita Hager co-star.<\/p>\n

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Fishing Without Nets<\/strong><\/p>\n

Co-writer\/director Cutter Hodierne\u2019s personal story centers on a principled, Somalian young husband and father Abdi turns to piracy to support his family. While his wife and child wait for him in Yemen, an outdated and fragile satellite phone is his only connection to all he truly values. Abdi and his fellow pirates hit the high seas and capture a French oil tanker, demanding a hefty ransom. During the long, tedious wait for the cash to arrive, Abdi forges a tentative friendship with one of the hostages. When some of the pirates resort to violence, Abdi must make dramatic choices to determine his course. The film stars Abdikani Muktar, Abdi Siad, Abduwhali Faarah, Abdikhadir Hassan, Reda Kateb and Idil Ibrahim.<\/p>\n

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Imperial Dreams<\/strong><\/p>\n

Malik Vitthal\u2019s radiant debut feature leavens hardcore gangster life with a warm and earnest humanity. Bambi wants to publish his credos and chronicles and start his career the way any other normal young writer would. For Bambi, however, normal is the quandary. \u201cNormal\u201d means returning to Watts, Los Angeles, after a 28-month jail stint to find his young son playing next to his strung-out grandmother. It\u2019s normal for the patriarch of his family to offer Bambi pills, guns, and a drug-running job as a way to welcome him home. A normal visit from his cousin involves Bambi and son performing minor surgery to extract a bullet from his arm. Bambi meets this surreal, ghetto normal with equanimity, but he knows life can\u2019t be \u201cnormal\u201d like this for long. Two-time Black Reel Award winner John Boyega headlines this talented cast, which includes Rotimi Akinosho, Glenn Plummer, Keke Palmer and De\u2019aundre Bonds.<\/p>\n

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Memphis<\/strong><\/p>\n

Writer\/director Tim Sutton crafts an impressionistic folktale framed around the enigmatic musician\/poet Willis Earl Beal and the city of Memphis in this story of a strange singer with God-given talent drifts through his adopted city of Memphis. With its canopy of ancient oak trees, streets of shattered windows, and aura of burning spirituality the film is an elusive document of myth-making and the sources that feed those myths. Beal, Lopaka Thomas, Constance Brantley, Devonte Hull, John Gary Williams and Larry Dodson star.<\/p>\n

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White Shadow<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alias is a young boy growing up in the central African bush. An albino, he is the subject of taunting and also vulnerable to a terrible danger: the belief among witch doctors and people of the region that the bodies of albinos offer magical powers. As a result of this belief, many albinos are murdered or mutilated for the prize of a charmed body part. Director Noaz Deshe draws a raw, emotionally shattering performance from Hamisi Bazili as Alias and powerfully renders his character\u2019s world of interlocking hells. Through precise, expressionistic visual and aural atmospheres that heighten the theme of darkness in the film, the audience is witness to a boy\u2019s plight and how he fights his way to justice and transcendence. The film stars. Hamisi Bazili, James Gayo, Glory Mbayuwayu and Salum Abdallah.<\/p>\n

DOCUMENTARY<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong>Finding Fela<\/strong><\/p>\n

No individual better embodies African music of the 1970s and \u201980s\u2014and its pivotal role in postcolonial political activism\u2014than Fela Kuti. After quickly taking his native Nigeria by storm, the pioneering musician\u2019s confrontational Afrobeat sound soon spread throughout the continent and beyond, even as it made determined enemies of the repressive Nigerian military regime. As a result of continued persecution, increasingly unorthodox behavior, and, eventually, complications due to HIV, Kuti\u2019s final years saw his musical output and influence wane. Academy Award winner Alex Gibney directs this story with music composed by Fela, himself.<\/p>\n

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Hoop Dreams<\/strong><\/p>\n

That Roger Ebert selected this three-hour documentary as the best film of the 1990s is just the first of many remarkable things about Hoop Dreams. Steve James\u2019s insightful and compassionate film follows two teenagers who hope to escape their inner-city Chicago neighborhoods by parlaying their basketball skills into NBA careers for five years. Arthur Agee and William Gates both receive scholarships to St. Joseph\u2019s, a suburban Catholic high school with one of the best basketball programs in the state. When Agee leaves for financial reasons to attend Marshall Metro, his neighborhood high school, the film counterpoints their stories as they try to lead their teams to the state finals. Directed by Steve James, Hoop Dreams won the documentary Audience Award at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival and made more top-10 lists than any other film that year. This year will feature a newly restored, high-definition digital print.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>No No: Dockumentary<\/strong><\/p>\n

The story of the pitcher who threw a no-hitter while tripping on acid\u2014known by fans and nonfans alike\u2014has become emblematic of professional baseball\u2019s excess in the 1970s. However, that pitcher, Dock Ellis, had a career and a life that transcended one use of LSD. Director Jeffrey Radice\u2019s film provides the backstory to an outrageous anecdote by presenting the full life\u2014warts and all\u2014of a unique baseball player and human being. From Jackie Robinson to Donald Hall, Ron Howard, and others, Dock Ellis touched the lives of many people, as told in this surprising story of redemption. Beastie Boy founding member Adam \u201cAd-Rock\u201d Horovitz composed the score.<\/p>\n

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We Come as Friends<\/strong><\/p>\n

As war-ravaged South Sudan claims independence from North Sudan and its brutal President, Omar al-Bashir, a tiny, homemade prop plane wings in from France. It is piloted by eagle-eyed documentarian Hubert Sauper, who is mining for stories in a land trapped in the past but careening toward an apocalyptic future. Like his flying machine, Sauper intuitively zooms in for close-ups and out for perspective, yielding shocking and profound insights about the contours of contemporary colonialism. Brimming with visual metaphor and grounded in honest human contact, We Come as Friends is an electrifying collage of horrifying, but sometimes poetic, contradiction.<\/p>\n

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