On Thursday, September 19, 2024, Firelight Media hosted a Beyond Resilience conversation with the visionaries behind some of the most innovative and exciting Black-run movie theaters and film programming organizations in the U.S.
Accessibility Notice: This event recording includes ASL interpretation and closed captions.
Moderator Jessica Green (Independent Impact Producer, It Was All a Dream & Driver; Independent Film Curator, BAM & MCNY) was joined by Curtis Caesar John (Founder & Executive Director, The Luminal Theater, Columbia, South Carolina), Melissa Lyde (Founder, Alfreda’s Cinema, Brooklyn, New York), and Harrison Guy (Director of Arts & Culture, The DeLuxe Theater, Houston, Texas) to dive into their experiences building their visionary organizations and spaces. The event was introduced by Chloë Walters-Wallace (Director of Regional Initiatives, Firelight Media).
Black-run movie houses have shaped the film industry for over a century, and these increasingly rare spaces are an important tool for sustaining Black independent film. Yet the history of the Black movie house remains hidden, and its contemporary value, is underestimated.
In this conversation, we explore the role that Black film houses and film programming organizations play for independent BIPOC filmmakers and the formidable challenges these spaces face. We ask how Black film houses and BIPOC filmmakers can best work together to ensure mutual success and how successful practices can be replicated. And we explore how these spaces embody the philosophy of creative placemaking and how arts and culture can be used to create spaces of community and resistance through social engagement.
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The Beyond Resilience Series is sponsored by Open Society Foundations. Beyond Resilience is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Field of Vision.
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Jessica Green is an independent film impact producer and film curator. She is currently working with several independent non-fiction filmmakers on impact strategies for their films, and is also programming several upcoming film, speaker, and performance focused series for the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Museum of the City of New York. Jessica served as the artistic director of the Houston Cinema Arts Society from 2019-2022, providing artistic leadership for year-round film programming and the Houston Cinema Arts Festival, Houston’s largest film festival. She was the cinema director of the Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem from 2008-2018. Jessica is also the former executive editor of BET.com (2000-2005), and a founder, owner, and editor-In-chief of the New York-based, independent Hip-Hop magazine Stress (1994-2001).
Curtis Caesar John is an arts manager, advocate, and media producer with a specialty in discovering and bringing needed attention to the work of talented filmmakers and artists. He believes in cinema as one of the most powerful means of sharing life's stories and furthering our understanding of one another, even within our own cultures. Curtis is the Founder and Exec. Director of The Luminal Theater, a nomadic microcinema that brings Black indie cinema directly to Black audiences along the eastern US seaboard and beyond, and continuously highlights the legacy of filmmakers from the Black/African diaspora. He is also co-founder/producer of the long-running Caribbean Film Series which takes place at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in Brooklyn, where he also served as a Programmer-at-Large from 2017-2020. Curtis is also co-founder/producer of BLK Docs (2020-present), an initiative to help build an authentic documentary film culture within the African-American community through film screenings, webinars, and more interactive film events.
Melissa Lyde is Founder of Alfreda’s Cinema in Brooklyn, New York, which is working towards becoming the only microcinema, gallery, and cafe in Brooklyn to operate under the leadership of a Black woman with a mission to screen films that celebrate Black and non-Black people of color. Founded by Melissa Lyde in 2015, Alfreda’s Cinema screens films that tell Black stories that resonate with depth and love, the richness and culture of Black history, dynamics, shapes, colors, and truths. What started as a passion project for Lyde is now a pop-up Black Cinema in partnership with Film Forum, Metrograph, BAM, Lincoln Center, and the Maysles Documentary Center in NYC, but she has larger hopes for the cinema to finally have a permanent place to call home.
Harrison Guy is director of arts and culture for The DeLUXE Theater in Houston, TX. The DeLUXE Theater's mission is to create a space where arts and culture live – on and off the stage – by providing theater and creative experiences that are within reach for all artists and all people. They support artists, irrespective of discipline or career stage, by providing a hub for creating and performing works. The DeLUXE Theater seeks to energize the 5th Ward community by using the stage to educate, empower and entertain its audiences. Their “Reachable- Arts for All” approach is achieved by building and maintaining bridges between creatives, community and the city.
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