Alfre Woodard is an American actress. Known for portraying strong-willed and dignified roles on stage and screen, she has received various accolades, including four Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and two Canadian Screen Awards, as well as nominations for an Academy Award, BAFTA Award and two Grammy Awards. In 2020, The New York Times ranked her as one of "The 25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century". She is a board member of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Heather Rae is an American film and television producer and director. She has worked on documentary and narrative film projects, specializing in those with Native American themes, and is best known for Frozen River, Trudell and Tallulah.
Elizabeth Freya Garbus is an American documentary film director and producer. Notable documentaries Garbus has made are The Farm: Angola, USA,Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,Bobby Fischer Against the World,Love, Marilyn,What Happened, Miss Simone?, and Becoming Cousteau. She is co-founder and co-director of the New York City-based documentary film production company Story Syndicate.
Anna Cooke Kendrick is an American actress. Her first starring role was in the 1998 Broadway musical High Society, for which she earned a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. She made her film debut in the musical comedy Camp (2003) and had a supporting role in The Twilight Saga (2008–2011). She achieved wider recognition for the comedy-drama film Up in the Air (2009), which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and for her starring role in the Pitch Perfect film series (2012–2017).
Julius Onah is a Nigerian-American filmmaker and occasional actor.
Black women filmmakers have made contributions throughout the history of film. According to Nsenga Burton, writer for The Root, "the film industry remains overwhelmingly white and male. In 2020, 74.6 percent of movie directors of theatrical films were white, showing a small decrease from the previous year. In terms of representation, 25.4 percent of film directors were of ethnic minority in 2020. Of the 25.4 percent of minority filmmakers, a small percentage was female.
The Athena Film Festival is an annual film festival held at Barnard College of Columbia University in New York City. The festival takes place in February and focuses on films celebrating women and leadership. In addition to showing films, the festival hosts filmmaker workshops, master classes and panels on a variety of topics relevant to women in the film industry. The Athena Film Festival was co-founded by Kathryn Kolbert, Founding Director of the Athena Center for Leadership Studies at Barnard College and Melissa Silverstein, founder of the Women and Hollywood initiative and the festival's Artistic Director.
Danielle Deadwyler is an American actress. She began her career appearing on Atlanta stage, including in the 2009 production of For Colored Girls, and made her screen debut in the 2012 drama film A Cross to Bear. Deadwyler appeared in the primetime series The Haves and the Have Nots (2015–2017), the series P-Valley (2020), the miniseries Station Eleven (2021–2022), and the miniseries From Scratch (2022).
Knucklehead is a 2015 American drama film directed by Ben Bowman. It premiered at the 2015 BAMCinématek New Voices in Black Cinema festival.
Ben Bowman is an American film director and screenwriter. He made his feature debut with the drama Knucklehead. The film premiered as the opening night film at the 2015 BAMcinématek New Voices in Black Cinema Festival. It went on to win awards at film festivals across the U.S. and earned positive reviews. A North American release was scheduled for October 2016.
DeWanda Wise is an American actress. She starred in Spike Lee's Netflix comedy-drama series She's Gotta Have It (2017–19), a contemporary adaptation of his 1986 film.
Juanita is a 2019 American drama film directed by Clark Johnson and adapted from a screenplay by Roderick M. Spencer, based upon the novel Dancing on the Edge of the Roof by Sheila Williams. Starring Alfre Woodard and Adam Beach, with Ashlie Atkinson, Sam Hennings, Blair Underwood, and LaTanya Richardson Jackson in supporting roles, it was released on March 8, 2019, by Netflix.
Share is a 2019 coming-of-age drama film, written and directed by Pippa Bianco, based upon Bianco's short film of the same name. It stars Rhianne Barreto, Charlie Plummer, Poorna Jagannathan, J. C. Mackenzie, Nicholas Galitzine, and Lovie Simone.
The 2019 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 24 to February 3, 2019. The first lineup of competition films was announced on November 28, 2018.
The Souvenir is a 2019 drama film written and directed by Joanna Hogg. A semi-autobiographical account of Hogg's experiences at film school, it stars Honor Swinton Byrne, Tom Burke and Tilda Swinton. The Souvenir had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on 17 January 2019, and was released in the US on 17 May 2019 by A24, and in the UK on 30 August 2019, by Curzon Artificial Eye. It received critical acclaim.
Fatherhood is a 2021 American comedy-drama film directed by Paul Weitz from a screenplay by Weitz and Dana Stevens based on the 2011 memoir Two Kisses for Maddy: A Memoir of Loss and Love by Matthew Logelin. The film stars Kevin Hart, Alfre Woodard, Frankie R. Faison, Lil Rel Howery, DeWanda Wise, Anthony Carrigan, Melody Hurd, and Paul Reiser, and follows a new father who struggles to raise his daughter after the sudden death of his wife.
Chinonye Chukwu is a Nigerian-American film director best known for the drama films Clemency and Till. She is the first African-American woman to win the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.
Time is an Academy Award-nominated 2020 American documentary film produced and directed by Garrett Bradley. It follows Sibil Fox Richardson, fighting for the release of her husband, Rob, who was serving a 60-year prison sentence for engaging in an armed bank robbery.
Till is a 2022 biographical drama film directed by Chinonye Chukwu and written by Michael Reilly, Keith Beauchamp, and Chukwu, and produced by Beauchamp, Reilly, and Whoopi Goldberg. It is based on the true story of Mamie Till-Bradley, an educator and activist who pursued justice after the murder of her 14-year-old son Emmett in August 1955. The film stars Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie and Jalyn Hall as Emmett. Kevin Carroll, Frankie Faison, Haley Bennett, Jayme Lawson, Tosin Cole, Sean Patrick Thomas, John Douglas Thompson, Roger Guenveur Smith, and Goldberg also appear in supporting roles.
A Thousand and One is a 2023 American drama film, written and directed by A.V. Rockwell. The film stars Teyana Taylor, Will Catlett, Josiah Cross, Aven Courtney and Aaron Kingsley Adetola. Set in the 1990s and 2000s, it follows a single mother who decides to kidnap her son out of the foster care system to raise him herself, as the two struggle with life in a constantly changing New York City. It had its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2023, and won the Grand Jury Prize. It was released on March 31, 2023, by Focus Features.
