2025 Black Perspectives | Chicago International Film Festival

Black Cinema, Global Futures:
The Unbroken Infrastructure of Black Cinema

The Black Perspectives program at the Chicago International Film Festival didn’t arrive fully formed. It sits on half a century of struggle, invention, and persistence by filmmakers, curators, archivists, and communities who refused to let Black cinema vanish into neglect. This is a pre-history.

From Newark to Oakland, from Los Angeles to New York, and finally here in Chicago, Black film festivals created the infrastructure that carried our stories when mainstream institutions had no place for them. They built audiences, preserved archives, and nurtured filmmakers across generations and borders.

As the 61st Chicago International Film Festival opens, its Black Perspectives program enters its 28th year — a milestone worth celebrating. But to fully appreciate its place in 2025, we must look back: to the elders who built the first Black festivals, to the years when films like Top of the Heap and The Story of a Three Day Pass were suppressed at home while celebrated abroad, to the networks that linked Harlem, Oakland, Dakar, and Chicago into a living circuit of Black cinema.

Beginnings: A Revelation on Channel 11

Film festivals are more than screenings. They are launchpads for independent voices, incubators of careers, and crucibles of cultural dialogue. They connect filmmakers to distributors, spotlight overlooked stories, and create spaces where audiences encounter visions they didn’t know they were seeking. At their best, they expand both industry and imagination.

My journey began not in a festival hall, but on Chicago public television. In 1969, I was a teenager when I tuned into WTTW’s Foreign Film Festival series and saw Melvin Van Peebles’ The Story of a Three Day Pass. It was the first time I encountered a Black director crafting cinema on his own terms — poetic, biting, political.

Later, documentary filmmaker St. Clair Bourne joked with me that when Van Peebles arrived at the San Francisco International Film Festival, festival staff assumed he must be Dutch. The idea that an African American could have directed such a film was unthinkable to them. Van Peebles himself confirmed the absurdity: “They didn’t believe I was me.”

That absurd moment revealed both the brilliance of his work and the blindness of the industry. For me, it was a revelation: authentic Black cinema had a global presence, even if America refused to recognize it.

“My first glimpse of authentic Black cinema came not in a festival hall, but on Chicago public television — Melvin Van Peebles beaming a revolution into my living room.”

The Missing Presence

When I began attending the Chicago International Film Festival in the early 1970s, the absence of serious Black cinema was impossible to miss. Hollywood’s “Blaxploitation” films dominated theater screens. Slick, violent, and often cartoonish, they flattened Black life into caricature.

And yet, the financial power of those films was undeniable. The Chicago Reporter conducted a study between January 1973 and August 1974 of Chicago’s eight Loop theaters — the Chicago, Loop, Oriental, Roosevelt, State Lake, Todd, United Artists, and Woods. Out of 193 films shown, Black films accounted for 41 percent of box office revenue.

But the profits went elsewhere: white theater owners, white distributors, white producers. The creativity of Black directors was largely locked out of that cycle, and works with greater nuance and artistry were buried.

Christopher St. John’s 1972 film Top of the Heap was one of those casualties. A surreal, experimental portrait of a Black police officer wrestling with personal and systemic breakdown, it won the Gandhi Award at the Berlin International Film Festival. But its distributor pulled it from Cannes out of fear it would be “too arthouse.” A fight over writing credits killed its release. The film disappeared until I helped revive it in 2013.

![Film Still – Top of the Heap]

Standing on Shoulders

By the late 1970s, only a handful of U.S. festivals centered Black cinema. Each embodied a distinct mission:

• Newark Black Film Festival (1974): The first and longest-running Black film festival, born from Oliver Franklin’s vision and anchored at the Newark Museum of Art. It made Black cinema visible to families and communities who had been shut out of mainstream cultural institutions.
• Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame (Oakland, 1974): Founded by educator Mary Perry Smith, it paired screenings with honoring the pioneers of Black cinema — an invaluable act of remembrance and validation.
• Black Talkies on Parade (Los Angeles, 1977): Created by archivist Mayme Clayton, it tied cinema to history and cultural preservation, ensuring that films were seen in context, not isolation.
• Journey Across 3 Continents (New York, 1979): Organized by Pearl Bowser, it convened the first Black Women’s Film Festival and foregrounded diaspora connections.

These were not abstract institutions — they were built by real people who mentored me personally. Mary Perry Smith once dragged me to tennis practice when I worked with her in Oakland. Mayme Clayton teased me endlessly for refusing to pick up golf. Pearl Bowser gave me my first real lesson in how archival work is a form of power.

“They built platforms where none existed. Our task was not just to use them, but to extend them.”

Chicago’s Response: Blacklight

In 1981, Andrea Bailey organized the South Shore Film Festival with support from Warrington Hudlin and Ayoka Chenzira of the Black Filmmakers Foundation. When it ended, a void opened in Chicago.

Terry Glover and I stepped into that void. Partnering with Joe Hoffman at Chicago Filmmakers and Richard Peña at the School of the Art Institute, we launched the Blacklight Festival of International Black Cinema in 1982.

Blacklight wasn’t just about programming films. It was about creating a membership organization that could sustain itself, connect with other Black festivals, and build an alternative distribution circuit. We imagined filmmakers from Lagos, Kingston, London, and Chicago sharing screens and audiences.

Sergio Mims soon joined us. Fresh from LA, where he had worked on Jamaa Fanaka’s Penitentiary, he became a key programmer and voice. For two decades, Blacklight kept international connections alive in what was still, for many, cinematic wilderness.

Later, Sergio helped build Chicago’s Black Harvest Film Festival, while I worked with Menelik Shabazz on London’s BFM Film Festival, associated produced with Julie Dash on Daughters of the Dust, collaborated with Jean-Pierre Bekolo in Cameroon, taught classes for Imruh Bakari at the Zanzibar International Film Festival and interfaced with filmmakers alll over the African diaspora. Blacklight was not just an event — it was infrastructure.

Suppressed Abroad, Ignored at Home

Suppression wasn’t limited to the U.S. market. Julie Dash and Barbara McCullough, both part of the UCLA-based L.A. Rebellion, took bold steps in 1980 to screen Black independent films at Cannes’ Marché du Cinéma. Their initiative led to the first retrospective of Afro-American cinema at the Forum des Halles in Paris.

It was a breakthrough in Europe. Yet at home, American curators showed little interest. The L.A. Rebellion’s creative and political work was celebrated abroad while ignored in its own country — a bitter pattern for generations of Black filmmakers.

Mainstream Shifts: From Margins to Perspectives

The infrastructure built by independent festivals forced the mainstream to adjust.

By the 1990s, new events emerged — the American Black Film Festival (1997), the Hollywood Black Film Festival (1998), and the Pan African Film & Arts Festival in Los Angeles (1992). These festivals created an undeniable ecosystem. Hollywood and major festivals could no longer pretend Black cinema was a passing trend.

At CIFF, the Black Perspectives program was founded in 1997 in collaboration with Spike Lee. For the first time, African American and African diaspora filmmakers had a dedicated spotlight in one of the country’s most prestigious festivals.

Through Black Perspectives, audiences saw early work by Ava DuVernay, George Tillman Jr., Lee Daniels, and Maya Angelou. They encountered giants like Ousmane Sembène and Djibril Diop Mambéty. And they honored Sidney Poitier, Viola Davis, Forest Whitaker, and other artists whose work had redefined cinema.

“The infrastructure built by Black festivals forced the mainstream to adjust. What was once marginal had become central.”

The 61st Chicago International Film Festival (2025)

Half a century after my first CIFF visit, the 2025 Black Perspectives lineup is especially strong, pairing new work with tributes to pioneers.

This Year’s Tributes

Nia DaCosta — recipient of the Black Perspectives Artistic Achievement Award (Oct 19, Music Box Theatre). DaCosta is one of Hollywood’s most versatile directors, from Little Woods to Candyman to The Marvels, and now the forthcoming 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.

Euzhan Palcy — recipient of the Career Achievement Award (Oct 25, Logan Center). Palcy made history with Sugar Cane Alley (1983), became the first Black woman to direct a major U.S. studio film (A Dry White Season, 1989), and received an honorary Oscar in 2022.

Highlights from Black Perspectives 2025

Cotton Queen (Suzannah Mirghani, Sudan/Qatar, 90 min)

In a cotton-farming village where purity and tradition dictate life, a teenager confronts the pressures of modernity and global capital.

![Film Still – Cotton Queen]

The Eyes of Ghana (Ben Proudfoot, Ghana/USA, 92 min)

A documentary portrait of Chris Hesse, cameraman to Kwame Nkrumah, and guardian of Ghana’s independence archive.

My Father’s Shadow (Tolu Ajayi, Nigeria, 104 min)

Two brothers and their estranged father clash in Lagos during the 1993 election crisis.

One Golden Summer (Christine Swanson, USA, 98 min)

Chronicling Chicago’s Jackie Robinson West Little League — its glory, scandal, and resilience.

Pasa Faho (Ananda Safo, Togo/France, 88 min)

A father and son rebuild their bond amid the struggles of small-scale enterprise.

Seeds (Angela Tucker, USA, 95 min)

Following Black farmers fighting to sustain land and legacy in the U.S. South.

Sugar Cane Alley (Restored) (Euzhan Palcy, Martinique/France, 1983/2025 restoration, 103 min)

A restored classic set in 1930s Martinique.

Sun Ra: Do the Impossible (Christine Turner, USA, 94 min)

Rare archives illuminate Sun Ra’s radical music and cosmic philosophy.

True North (Michèle Stephenson, Canada, 100 min)

Revisiting the 1969 Sir George Williams Affair in Montreal, Canada’s largest student protest.

Also featured: Shorts 3: Black Perspectives (Oct 25, AMC NewCity 14) — six films exploring parenthood, artistry, love, and memory across the diaspora.

Black Film Festivals: Still Vital, Still Irreplaceable

Black film festivals remain vital nodes in a global network. They provide context and community — things no mainstream festival can replace.

They are also the best places to engage urgent new questions: How will AI shape storytelling? How do we protect authenticity in an era when algorithms can mimic our voices and faces? Festivals are where we can ask these questions with rigor and imagination.

As Oscar Micheaux once said:

“You have to go back and collect the past before you can go forward.”

Festivals are the looms where past and future are woven together into living culture.

Upcoming Black Film Festivals (2025–2026)

2025

• San Antonio Black International Film Festival (SABIFF): Oct 2–5, 2025 — San Antonio, TX
• Black Harvest Film Festival: Nov 7–16, 2025 — Chicago, IL
• African Film Festival (AFF): May 7–31, 2025 — New York, NY (Lincoln Center + Bronx Apr 12)
• American Black Film Festival (ABFF): June 11–15, 2025 — Miami Beach (+ online June 16–24)
• African Diaspora International Film Festival (ADIFF – Chicago): June 13–15, 2025 — FACETS Film Forum, Chicago
• BlackStar Film Festival: July 31–Aug 3, 2025 — Philadelphia, PA
• PAFF Austin Series: July 31–Aug 3, 2025 — Austin, TX
• Detroit Black Film Festival (DETBFF): Sept 25–28, 2025 — Detroit, MI
• Denton Black Film Festival (DBFF): Jan 26–Feb 2, 2025 — Denton, TX (hybrid)
• SOUL Film Festival x ABFF Global: Aug 2025 — London & Birmingham, UK

2026

• Pan African Film Festival (PAFF): Feb 9–16, 2026 — Los Angeles, CA
• American Black Film Festival (ABFF, 30th Anniversary): May 27–31, 2026 — Miami Beach
• African Diaspora Cinema Festival: Sept 2026 — location TBD