Celebrating Black Cinematic Excellence: 2025 NC Black Film Fest Highlights
How the North Carolina Black Film Festival Honors Black Innovation, Storytelling and Culture
Black filmmaking is essential to telling our stories honestly. “Sinners” by Ryan Coogler just had a $60 million dollar opening weekend because we are drawn to movies written from the Black perspective. When asked why a white director couldn’t make the Golden Globe-nominated film “Fences” Denzel Washington simply said, “It’s not color, it’s culture.” Black films offer unapologetic representation to our experiences providing an honest lens into our culture, pain and most importantly, our triumphs.
Growing up, I didn’t watch a lot of movies. I saw “Friday” for the first time in my 30s but I watched “Belly” about 1049 times in high school. I was drawn in because I had a crush on Nas and DMX was my big cousin in my head, but what’s burned in my brain is the blue hue that radiated off Keisha’s midnight skin. Taral Hicks, the actress who played Keisha, effortlessly exuded sexy under that blue light. It was the first time I saw a dark-skinned Black woman as a sex symbol on screen, an intoxicating image that was burned into my memory.
That’s just one example of the power of Black stories being told by Black people, and one of the many reasons that the North Carolina Black Film Festival (NCBFF) has been held in Wilmington, NC for over 21 years by the Black Arts Alliance. This year, North Carolina native Isiah Danté Lee received the NCBFF 2025 Visionary Award for Cinematography. He’s worked on music videos for Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, YG, John Legend and Travis Scott; shot commercials with today’s stars like Tabitha Brown and LeBron James; and filmed “Burning Sands” and upcoming Amazon Prime movie “The Better Sister.”
Belly’s cinematography also left a lasting impression on Lee. “The director, Hype Williams and more specifically Malik Sayeed, the cinematographer, were working at the height of their powers in terms of the utilization of the visual medium. It's mesmezing. It's completely mesmerizing.”
In 2019, Lee filmed a legacy music video for “What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye that seamlessly connected current our issues with those in 1971 when the song came out. “We shot it in Flint, Michigan and it was just a beautiful film. We tackled some of the issues that were going on in 2019. Contemporary issues, but a lot of the things we were shooting rang true back when he created the song as well,” Lee remembered.
32 films were shown during NCBFF. “Life in My Eyes” immediately caught my eye, which is ironic, because I’m legally blind. The documentary explored the life of Black and brown people in Chicago living with varying degrees of vision loss. This film was directed by Marshall Gibson and his friend, Stephan Anderson, went from being interviewed to being an executive producer because of his passion sharing his story and that of his colleagues at Illinois Center for the Rehabilitation and Education (ICRE).
Stephan was born with full vision but after several minor strokes and surgeries at 29-years-old, he went blind. As expected, initially losing his vision was hard to accept, but he graciously adapted. “It was a hard pill to swallow, but I had a good faith walk. “You know, ‘Walk by faith and not by sight.’ What inspired me was going to blind school and seeing people just like me.” Stephan was so motivated at ICRE that now he’s a peer counsel at the school. “Life in My Eyes” is still on the film festival circuit but it won the Sergio Mims Prize for Excellence in Black Filmmaking at the Black Harvest Film Festival in October 2024.
Another film that was presented at NCBFF was “The Ohio, Texas Remix” by internationally renowned filmmaker Ya’ke Smith which won 2nd place in the Best Short Film category. Unlike newcomers Gibson and Anderson, Smith has been making movies for 25 years and has shown his work at festival including Cannes Film Festival in France, Martha’s Vineyard African-American Film Festival and the Pan African Film Festival. “The Ohio, Texas Remix” is based on Smith’s childhood when his mother and father dealt with custody issues in, you guessed it, Ohio and Texas.
When asked what film from his tenure was his favorite, Smith couldn’t choose. “They’re all are special to me for various reasons because when I'm making a film, I'm either pulling it from my own lived experience, the experience of someone I know or I’m responding to something, that really troubles me at the time,” Smith stated. A great example of Smith’s dedication to sharing our stories is PBS’s “Juneteenth: Faith and Freedom” which is centered around the Juneteenth Holiday in Texas.
Films that have been shot in Wilmington, N.C. include “The Inkwell,” “Iron Man 3,” and “The Notebook” as well as the TV series “One Tree Hill.” Charlon Turner, Black Arts Alliance Vice President and Festival Director, said the festival is important for the area. “Wilmington was known as the Hollywood of the East at one time and we have a long history of filmmaking in this area. Independent films give people an opportunity and a platform to produce and direct their own projects because the film industry has changed so much. We feature local and international filmmakers from as far as Africa and London.” Previous NCBFF honorees are Pam Grier, Giancarlo Esposito and Ava DuVernay.
Head to the Black Arts Alliance website for more information about this year’s North Carolina Black Film Festival and other upcoming events.
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