8th ANNUAL HONOLULU AFRICAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL
If Beale Street Could Talk movie trailer
If Beale Street Could Talk part of the Honolulu African-American Film Festival 2019
For the closing night of the Honolulu African-American Film Festival 2019, celebrate the Academy Award-winning director Barry Jenkins’ cinematic portrayal of James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk. In early 1970s Harlem, daughter and wife-to-be Tish vividly recalls the passion, respect and trust that connected her and her artist fiancé Alonzo Hunt, who goes by the nickname Fonny. Friends since childhood, the devoted couple dream of a future together, but their plans are derailed when Fonny is arrested for a crime he did not commit.
The Honolulu African-American Film Festival closes the festival by celebrating the film’s portrayal of black love in its many forms. The film has received numerous accolades and nominations this year, including winning Best Supporting Actress by Regina King at the 76th Golden Globe Awards.
Directed by Barry Jenkins. USA. 2019. 117 min
LIYANA film trailer
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Film:
Liyana is part of Honolulu African-American Film Festival 2019.
Under the guidance of acclaimed South African storyteller, Gcina Mhlophe, five orphaned children from Swaziland collaborate to craft an original fairy tale drawn from their darkest memories and brightest dreams. Their fictional character, Liyana, is brought to life in innovative animated artwork as she embarks on a dangerous quest to rescue her young twin brothers. The children's real and imagined worlds converge, and they must choose what kind of story they will tell—in fiction and in their own lives. This inspiring tale of perseverance is a tribute to creativity, the strength of the human spirit, and the healing power of storytelling.
Directed by Amanda Kopp and Aaron Kopp. Executive Producer Thandie Newton. USA. 2018. 77 mins.
21 and Done film trailer
Directed by Kiara C. Jones. USA. 2018. 60 min.�Kiara C. Jones, director of the narrative romance Christmas Wedding Baby, returns to the Honolulu African-American Film Festival to present a powerful and eye-opening look at the challenges youth face in the foster care system. Twenty-one is a celebrated age for many young Americans, but if you’re aging out of the foster care system, the countdown can feel more like a ticking timebomb. What should be an age for celebrating adulthood becomes a time of anxiety, desperation and danger for many of these young adults. Meet current and former foster youth facing these unique challenges and the organizations on the front lines battling for their futures.
Join us for a post-screening conversation with filmmaker Kiara C. Jones and local professionals working with youth in the foster care system. Full list of panelists to be announced soon.
VAYA film trailer
Directed by Akin Omotoso. South Africa. 2016. 115 mins. Zulu with English subtitles.�Handpicked by Ava DuVernay and a Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and Berlinale official selection, VAYA pays homage to the Tsotsitaal namesake meaning “to go." VAYA chronicles the innocence lost by three young South Africans who journey away from their rural homes on a train bound for Johannesburg. Stirring and suspenseful, VAYA culminates in an explosive moment based on real accounts. Omotoso’s collaboration with first-time feature cinematographer Kabelo Thathe pairs stunning aerial shots with fast-paced images in Johannesburg to intertwine the stories of strangers struggling to survive.
Ta-Nehisi Coates speaks at Honolulu African American Film Festival
It was a wonderful evening at the Doris Duke Theatre in the Honolulu Museum of Art with the affable, often humorous, and completely brilliant world observer, Ta-Nehisi Coates. He not only shared his thoughts on reparations, racism, gender, incarceration, and systemic oppression, but appreciated learning about blackbirding in the Western Pacific from 1860 to 1904 (kidnapping and enslaving indigenous peoples from the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Loyalty Islands, Samoa, Kiribati, Rotuma, and Tuvalu). Our Honolulu African American Film Festival, and partners the Popolo Project, wrapped it's final event for 2018 in a most remarkable way! Next up, our 8th year in February 2019!
Opening night SOLD OUT-again! Tickets go fast each year for our premier of the Honolulu African American Film Festival at the Doris Duke Theatre in the Honolulu Art Museum. A 300-strong crowd enjoyed great entertainment, food, friendship, and conversation prior to the premier of the amazing and inspiring documentary, "Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise."
With Doris Duke Theatre curator Taylour Chang, Committee members Marsha McFadden, Sandra Simms, Sharon Yarborough, John Henry Nichols, Tadia Rice, Daphne Barbee Wooten.
Opening night SOLD OUT-again! Tickets go fast each year for our premier of the Honolulu African American Film Festival at the Doris Duke Theatre in the Honolulu Art Museum. A 300-strong crowd enjoyed great entertainment, food, friendship, and conversation prior to the premier of the amazing and inspiring documentary, "Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise."
With Festival curator Taylour Chang, Committee members Marsha McFadden, Sandra Simms, Sharon Yarborough, John Henry Nichols, Tadia Rice, Daphne Barbee Wooten.
Opening night SOLD OUT-again! Tickets go fast each year for our premier of the Honolulu African American Film Festival at the Doris Duke Theatre in the Honolulu Art Museum. A 300-strong crowd enjoyed great entertainment, food, friendship, and conversation prior to the premier of the amazing and inspiring documentary, "Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise."
February 4 through 17 Honolulu African American Film Festival
DON'T MISS IT! February 4 through 17, 2017
African-American History month brings the sixth annual Honolulu African American Film Festival. This year, the museum aligns the festival with concerts, a hip-hop education workshop, live theater, and a textile exhibition, with a focus on female voices of African descent. Program includes a talk by Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors.
Special thanks to the Honolulu African American Film Festival Committee, National Association of the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Hawai‘i Chapter, Hawai‘i Chapter Links Incorporated, Sisters Empowering Hawai‘i, The African-American Lawyers Association, and Hawai‘i Women in Filmmaking.
MAKE SURE YOU GET YOUR TIX EARLY FOR Opening-night reception: Saturday, Feb 4 at 6pm.
Enjoy good music, good wine, good food, and good company in celebration of the legendary singer, dancer, activist, poet, and writer Maya Angelou. During the reception, Karen Hampton: The Journey North will be open for view. At 6:30pm and 7pm, take a gallery tour and see youth poets perform spoken word pieces in reaction to the exhibition. Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise screens at 7:30pm.
Opening-night tickets: $35 | $30 museum members
Regular Screenings: $10 | $8 Museum Members
Buy tix online at https://honolulumuseum.org/16080-honolulu_african_american_film_festival_2017
Christmas Wedding Baby
Directed by Kiara Jones. USA. 2014. 100 min.
Feb. 24 at 1 p.m. March 1 at 7:30 p.m. Award-winning filmmaker Kiara Jones’s debut feature is a warm-hearted romcom that follows three sisters searching for happiness in the midst of the holiday season. Andrea is days from marrying the picture-perfect Brent, when her first love, Gabriel, walks into her pre-wedding photo shoot, turning her world upside down. Andrea reaches out to her successful oldest sister, Lori, who is having her own problems as she is suffering, alone, through premature labor. Middle sister Charlotte is overwhelmed by her career, kids and commitment- phobic boyfriend, and wonders if now is the time to break free of their relationship. Surprisingly, these three intelligent, charismatic, independent women are all manipulated by their overbearing mother, Miranda, and her archaic notions of womanhood. Christmas Wedding Baby takes an endearingly bittersweet approach to bridal jitters, single parenthood, and the joys of sisterhood.
Martha Redbone & Aaron Whitby in "Bone Hill"
The Honolulu African American Film Festival was thrilled to collaborate with the PAʻI Foundation in presenting the mesmerizing singer/songwriter Martha Redbone and songwriting partner Aaron Whitby perform "Bone Hill," which traces Redbone's family story in Appalachia, bridging Native American and African American music traditions. Inspired by Martha Redbone’s Native American and African American family lineage in the Appalachian Mountains, Bone Hill tells of a family permanently bonded to their culture, identity and the mountains, despite the passage of time and ever-changing laws intended to erase Native people from their homelands. The music is radically wide-ranging covering traditional chants and lullabies, parlor music and jazz, bluegrass and country, gospel and R&B, while the story is simply radical. Bone Hill is a moving family story told with humor and joy and a lot of great songs.
The Amazing Nina Simone trailer
The Amazing Nina Simone
Feb. 20 at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 28 at 7:30 p.m.
Museum members: $8.00 General Admission: $10.00
Directed by Jeff L. Lieberman. USA. 2015. 110 min.
With musical proclamations like Mississippi Goddam and an iconic style as the “High Priestess of Soul” Nina Simone is beloved and often misunderstood. Eleven years after her death, Simone is more popular than ever, and in 2015 was the subject of the acclaimed documentary What Happened Miss Simone, as well as the controversial biopic starring Zoe Saldana. President Barack Obama listed Sinnerman in his top 5 favorite songs, and whether remixed, resampled or in its pure form, Simone’s music continues to empower people around the world with its unrelenting appeal for justice. Extensively researched and drawing the inside story from more than 50 interviews with Nina’s family, friends, band members, lovers, and fellow activists, The Amazing Nina Simone is the first film to do justice to her uncategorizable art and complex personality. Filmmaker Jeff Lieberman worked closely with Simone's three surviving brothers, as well as her one-time manager, to give new insights into her musical journey from the segregated South, through the worlds of classical music, jazz joints and international concert halls, to her education among Harlem’s intelligentsia, the creation of more than 30 albums, her role in the civil rights movement, her struggle with mental illness, her self-exile to Liberia and France, and late-life comeback.
BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez trailer
BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez
Feb. 20 at 4 p.m.
Museum members: $8.00 General Admission: $10.00
Directed by Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater. USA. 2015. 90 min.
For 80-year-old Sonia Sanchez, writing is a personal and political act. She emerged as a seminal figure in
the 1960s Black Arts Movement, raising her voice in the name of Black culture, civil rights, women's
liberation, and peace as a poet, playwright, teacher, activist and early champion of the spoken word.
Deemed "a lion in literature's forest" by poet Maya Angelou and winner of major literary awards, including
the American Book Award, Sonia Sanchez is best known for 17 books of poetry that explore a wide range
of global and humanist themes, particularly the struggles and triumphs of women and people of color. In
BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez, the writer’s life unfolds in a documentary rich with readings and jazz-
accompanied performances of her work. With appearances by Questlove, Talib Kweli, Ursula Rucker,
Amiri Baraka, Haki Madhubuti, Jessica Care Moore, Ruby Dee, Yasiin Bey, Ayana Mathis, Imani Uzuri
and Bryonn Bain, the film examines Sanchez's contribution to the world of poetry, her singular place in
the Black Arts Movement and her leadership role in African American culture over the last half century.
The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo
The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo
Feb. 20 at 1 p.m.
March 3 at 7:30 p.m.
Museum members: $8.00 General Admission: $10.00
Directed by Yaba Badoe. Ghana. USA. UK. 2014. 78 min.
The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo explores the artistic contribution of one of Africa’s foremost woman writers,
charting her creative journey across seven decades, from colonial Ghana through the tumultuous era of
independence to a more sober present day Africa, where nurturing women’s creative talent remains as
hard as ever. Over the course of a year the film follows Aidoo as she returns home to her ancestral village
in the Central Region of Ghana, launches her latest collection of short stories in Accra, and travels to the
University of California, Santa Barbara, to attend the premier of her seminal play about the slave trade,
Anowa. With contributions from Carole Boyce Davies, Nana Wilson- Tagoe and Vincent Odamtten, The
Art of Ama Ata Aidoo offers fascinating insight into the life of a feminist poet and novelist who became a
Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution trailer
Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
Directed by Stanley Nelson. USA. 2015. 115 min.
Feb.19 at 7:30 p.m.
Feb. 26 at 1 p.m.
Feb. 29 at 6 p.m.
Free screening presented by Hawaii Women in Filmmaking and Hawaii People’s Fund Change was coming to America and the fault lines could no longer be ignored—cities were burning, Vietnam was exploding, and disputes raged over equality and civil rights. A new revolutionary culture was emerging and it sought to drastically transform the system. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense would, for a short time, put itself at the vanguard of that change. The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution is the first feature-length documentary to explore the Black Panther Party, its significance to the broader American culture, its cultural and political awakening for Black people, and the painful lessons wrought when a movement derails. Master documentarian Stanley Nelson goes straight to the source, weaving a treasure trove of rare archival footage with the voices of the people who were there: police, FBI informants, journalists, white supporters and detractors, and Black Panthers who remained loyal to the party and those who left it. Featuring Kathleen Cleaver, Jamal Joseph, and many others, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution is an essential history and a vibrant chronicle of this pivotal movement that birthed a new revolutionary culture in America.
Sembene!
Sembene!
Feb. 19 at 1 p.m.
Feb. 21 at 7:30 p.m.
Museum members: $8.00 General Admission: $10.00
Directed by Samba Gadjigo, Jason Silverman. Senegal / USA. 2014. 89 min. French and English with
English subtitles.
In 1952, Ousmane Sembéne, a dockworker and fifth-grade dropout from Senegal, began dreaming an
impossible dream: to become the storyteller for a new Africa. Sembene! tells the unbelievable true story
of the “father of African cinema,” the self-taught novelist and filmmaker who fought, against enormous
odds, to give African stories to Africans. During his 38-year career, he made nine films, taking on
incendiary, politically charged subjects in a clear-eyed and startling way. Yet his work is not as well
known as that of film pioneers from other parts of the globe. This intimate, insightful documentary seeks
to correct that. Told through the experiences of the man who knew him best, colleague and biographer
Samba Gadjigo, using rare archival footage and candid interviews, Sembene! reveals how an ordinary
man transformed himself into a fearless spokesperson for the marginalized, and became a hero to
millions.
Taking Israel trailers
Taking Israel
Showtimes:
Tuesday Feb 16 01:00 PM and 07:30 PM
Price:
Museum members: $8.00 General Admission: $10.00
Special thanks to community partners Temple Emanu-El and the Jewish Film Festival
Special guests: Executive producer Dr. Eric Winston and former program participant (featured in the documentary) J. Edward Moore.
Directed by Vincent Singleton. USA. 2015. 62 min.
From 1988-2002, over 150 African American students from Wilberforce University and other historically black colleges and universities traveled from the U.S. to Israel to observe the social, political, and economic conditions. In the documentary Taking Israel, some of the former students return to Israel, and recount their experiences of living on Kibbutz Ramat Menashe in northern Israel, teaching English at the Lazarus Community Center in Holon, studying at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and working alongside Israeli Arabs at the Givat Haviva Center for Arabic Studies in Givat Haviva, Israel. We learn from firsthand accounts how this experience shaped the perspectives of the students, as well as the people with which they worked and with whom they came in contact.
Taking Israel
Directed by Vincent Singleton. USA. 2015. 62 min. Feb. 16 at 1 p.m. Feb. 16 at 7:30 p.m. Wilberforce University of Ohio established the Institute for African-American/Israeli Exchange Program in 1988. In the summers between 1988 and 2001, approximately 150 African-American students traveled to Israel to experience the social, political, economic, and cultural conditions of Israel and of the Israeli-Arab population, working side-by-side with members of a kibbutz, and teaching English in one of the most impoverished neighborhoods of Tel Aviv. Many of these students had never before been outside the US and this experience of cross-cultural dialogue and learning had a profound impact on their lives. Through candid first-hand accounts, this film traces the incredible journey of the African American students, as well as the Israeli and Arab citizens whose lives they touched.
Special guest: Producer Dr. Eric Winston.
The Honolulu African American Film Festival takes place every February at the Honolulu Museum of Art Doris Duke Theatre.
