Film

  As we continue exploring Black History Month, HFPA member Kimberly Reyes recently sat down on zoom with two influential filmmakers who have unique credentials to address both where we stand and where we should be headed in entertaining and educating audiences to better understand history. Also in perfect timing for the milestone month, producer Chris L Jenkins and director Brandon Kramer are promoting their own documentary film, The First Step, which followed media personality and civil rights activist Van Jones as he attempted to build bridges during the Trump era and bring people together from both political parties to pass a landmark criminal justice bill on prison reform, The First Step bill.

In 1923, a gangster and bootlegger called Owney “The Killer” Madden got out of Sing Sing jail and bought out heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson’s supper club, the Club De Luxe, on the corner of 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue, in Harlem. He renamed it the Cotton Club.

In his comprehensive history of Blacks in American film, “Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks,” Donald Bogle talks about the portrayal of Blacks in early silent films. In 1903, a 12-minute film by Edwin S.

The first time Canadian filmmaker SJ Finlay visited the Philippines, he was only 8 years old. Growing up into a documentarian and a filmmaker, he went back in 2014.

One of the most glamorous stars of the 1930s and 40s in Hollywood, the exotic Merle Oberon had a secret, one she spent her lifetime protecting. In interviews like this one in 1934 with the publication The West Australian, Oberon kept up the fiction of her birth: “I was born in Tasmania but left there when I was a child.

On February 12, 1993, a small romcom movie titled Groundhog Day was released by Columbia Pictures - and we’ve been re-living that day over and over again for 30 years every February 2 as the official Groundhog Day. The film was directed, produced and co-written by comic genius, Harold Ramis, who died in 2014 at age 69 and also starred in, wrote and/or directed other classic comedies including: National Lampoon Animal House (1978), Meatballs (1979), Caddyshack (1980), Stripes (1981) and the groundbreaking blockbuster franchise, Ghostbusters (1984).

Perpetratin’ Realism – 1990s Black Film, the HFPA-funded American Cinematheque series, has successfully continued for the last eight months to bring New Black Realism films to Los Angeles audiences. Films like New Jack City, Boyz n the Hood and Eve’s Bayou have reinvigorated issues surrounding Black life and racism through the prism of today’s heightened awareness.

Commitment to Life is a documentary about unwavering bravery in the face of death, as we meet and hear about so many of the extraordinary and courageous people in Los Angeles who stepped forward during the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Premiering at the Santa Barbara Film Festival on February 11, Commitment to Life is directed by Jeffrey Schwarz (Tab Hunter Confidential, I Am Divine), and documents the true story of how an intrepid group of LA people living with HIV/AIDS – doctors, movie stars, studio moguls and activists – changed the course of the pandemic.

Indigenous Nollywood films have landed in mainstream movie theaters in the United States. The start was encouraging, and the organizers, Regal Cinemas, FilmOne Entertainment and Part Two Media with Amplify Africa promise new Nigerian movies in theaters every four to six weeks.