A conversation with Black filmmakers on how they are navigating the ubiquitous images of Black trauma in this moment, documenting Black life, and forging new cinematic languages, practices, and formal approaches.

Host:

• Marcia Smith is President of Firelight Media.

Moderator:

• Jason Fitzroy Jeffers, a Miami-based journalist, filmmaker, and co-executive director of the Miami-based Caribbean filmmaking collective "Third Horizon". Previously a staff writer at The Miami Herald, whose work primarily focuses on giving voice to often marginalized stories of the tropics. Additionally, produced the shorts films: "Papa Machete", "Swimming in Your Skin Again," and "T", which have screened at festivals, such as Sundance, BlackStar, TIFF and Sheffield.

Panelists:

• Ja'Tovia Gary, (Artist and Filmmaker). Through documentary film and experimental video art, Gary’s work seeks to liberate the distorted histories through which Black life is often viewed, while fleshing out a nuanced and multivalent Black interiority. Gary's award-winning films, "An Ecstatic Experience" and "Giverny I (Négresse Impériale)" have screened at festivals, cinemas, and institutions worldwide, including Edinburgh International Film Festival, The Whitney Museum, Anthology Film Archives, Atlanta Film Festival, the Schomburg Center, MoMa PS1, MoCA Los Angeles, and elsewhere.
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• Jon-Sesrie Goff, (Multidisciplinary Artist, Curator, Arts Administrator, Executive Director of The Flaherty / International Film Seminars). Goff believes that cinema has the power to explore the intersections of race, power, identity, gender, and the environment by unearthing the visceral representational value and authenticity behind the images propelled across varying diasporas. Goff has screened his videos at prominent public and private institutions. Currently, in the final stages of production for a feature documentary directorial debut, “After Sherman.”
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• Loira Limbal, (Afro-Latinx Filmmaker and DJ), interested in the creation of art that is nuanced and revelatory for communities of color. Limbal is the Senior Vice President for programs at Firelight Media. "Through the Night" is a feature documentary about a 24 hour daycare center, which was apart of the 2019 Sundance Documentary Edit and Story Lab, which had a world premiere at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival. Limbal's first film "Estilo Hip-Hop" was a co-production with ITVS and aired on PBS in 2009. Limbal co-produces and helms the popular Bronx monthly #APartyCalledRosiePerez.