Black Public Media (BPM) awarded a complete of $610,000 to movie and immersive initiatives and creatives at its seventh PitchBLACK Discussion board — the most important pitch competitors for unbiased filmmakers and inventive technologists creating new initiatives concerning the international Black expertise — on the PitchBLACK Awards on Thursday. The determine was the best ever quantity awarded at PitchBLACK. Sponsored by Netflix and PBS, the occasion — held at The Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse at Lincoln Heart — 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 is Zenón, a documentary concerning the lifetime of Puerto Rican fisherman and revolutionary Carlos “Taso” Zenón who spearheaded protests towards the U.S. Navy’s occupation, exploitation and environmental degradation of his dwelling, 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 nearly all of residents are Black Puerto Ricans. Judges of the PitchBLACK Movie Discussion board had been Chloe Gbai, Chris Hastings and Sabrina Schmidt-Gordon.
Picture Frequency Modulation, an interactive reminiscence broadcasting station investigating photos, 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 crew. 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 model, creativity and style. Judges of the PitchBLACK Immersive Discussion board had 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 crew, and to the broader trade, of the superb pool of expertise in our media making communities,” mentioned Leslie Fields-Cruz, govt director of BPM. “What this 12 months’s PitchBLACK individuals 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 offered 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 attainable by the Company for Public Broadcasting, the fund helps makers within the custom of the late Peabody Award-winning director and BPM’s second govt director, Jacquie Jones, who helped foster numerous 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 collection 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 by Could 5. In-person screenings will happen in Los Angeles (April 27), Santa Barbara (April 30) and Baltimore (Could 3). Some screenings shall be adopted by conversations with the filmmaker. The New York screenings had been produced in partnership with ImageNation. For extra info, 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 assist inventive technologists beneath 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 Pageant 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 initiatives since launching PitchBLACK in 2015. A few of the initiatives 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 initiatives for PBS, CNN, Showtime, Netflix, HBO, BET, NBC, The CW and extra.
Netflix’s continued assist is a part of the corporate’s Fund for Artistic Fairness, a devoted effort to assist construct new alternatives for underrepresented communities inside leisure. Extra assist 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 info on BPM, go to blackpublicmedia.org. Comply with BPM on social media at observe the group on Fb and Instagram @blackpublicmedia and watch the PitchBLACK occasions on the BPM YouTube channel.
