Native Son, Benny Starr, Rodrick Cliché

67 min | 2020 | US | Festival Circuit Premiere

In Spring 2020, the Acres of Ancestry Initiative/Black Agrarian Fund collaborated with the South Carolina Lowcountry hip hop group, Native Son, to create the anthem for their campaign, ‘The Land’, their generation’s love offering to the struggle to protect 1.5 million acres of Black farmlands from USDA dispossession. The film explores southern Black agrarian stories of self-determination, land ownership, and folkwit; it amplifies ongoing struggles for restorative land justice in this country including the Black Farmers’ Appeal: Cancel Pigford Debt Campaign, and weaves together live musical performances from Native Son with the personal narratives of Black legacy farmers and land stewards. The Black Farmers’ Appeal: Cancel Pigford Debt Campaign is organizing on a grassroots level, popular education, and legal advocacy campaign to rectify the injustices of the Pigford v. Glick class action discrimination lawsuit. Inspired by David Walker’s impassioned entreaty against the chattel enslavement of Africans in the United States, the Black Farmers’ Appeal: Cancel Pigford Debt Campaign is a polemic against yet another form of racialized capitalism–unconscionable debt. Our coalition is comprised of a multigenerational tribe of farmers, attorneys, writers, artists, and musicians using our diverse magic to bring restorative land justice to our Black legacy farmers. We use diverse strategies to preserve the Black agricultural land base, exploring innovative collaborations that deepen the linkages of music, culture, ecocultural traditions, and cooperative economy to protect Black landownership and stewardship, while raising community awareness, collectivism, and action. We also merge the aims of our campaign with our cooperative economy works with fiber artists, heritage quilters, and keepers of material culture.

Official Selections: Justice for Black Farmers Act, Juneteenth Screening on Acres of Ancestry Initiative/Black Agrarian Fund.

HELLO SUNSHINE

Joe Quint

13 min | 2021 | US | US Premiere

Roz Pichardo is more than a domestic violence and gun violence survivor, she’s a warrior. Despite of - or because of - being thrown off a bridge by an abusive ex-boyfriend, the unsolved murder of her brother, and the suicide of her identical twin sister, she’s able to channel her trauma into service by helping the often-forgotten people of North Philadelphia. From giving comfort to families of murder victims to saving the lives of over 500 men and women in active opioid addiction, Roz knows that her healing and her survival depends upon healing others.

Awards: BEST DOC SHORT/Brighton Rocks FF, New York Lift-Off Festival; Official Selections: Philadelphia Latino FF, Barnes FF, LA Rocks FF, Beyond the Curve Int’l FF, The Romford FF, Oxford Int’l Short FF, Street Movies Philadelphia.