Bay Area performers and filmmakers are grappling with what it means to be artists as displacement, surveillance, violence, the pandemic, and economic disruption wreak havoc on their communities.
They follow a long lineage of local media makers leveraging film as a collaborative process to engage their communities, by connecting personal emotional truths to immediate social priorities and needs. The program will explore how media makers are experimenting with and pushing the boundaries of filmmaking by redefining the meaning of success, away from the commercial-driven goal of building mass audiences and toward community-driven self-identification and inclusion.
Photo: Jules Retzlaff, “Dedicated to Those Who”, 2021
Panelists
Isa Nakazawa (Moderator)
Director of Marketing and Communications, BAVC
Donté Clark
Poet
Mike Evans Jr.
Comedian, Writer, Filmmaker
Jules Retzlaff
Filmmaker
Alba Roland Mejia
Writer, Producer, and Director
Films
Dedicated to Those Who
USA | 2021 | 14 mins. | Directed by Jules Retzlaff
DEDICATED TO THOSE WHO — A hybrid doc and visual album exploring the struggles of the past, present, and future San Francisco — is an album that explores the relation between community, revolution, resistance, and artistry as an example of love and a commitment to liberation. To the people of San Francisco. The Album is Music and Film dedicated to the question that we have seen erupt from the community here by the bay. What does freedom look like? What does justice look like? Dedicated serves as a reminder that the people here in San Francisco are as beautiful as the world. San Francisco holds a blueprint to freedom. San Francisco is the world. The same goes for any community. Any community under attack, any community rising in resistance, and any community lost in this distorted reality we call “today”, is a microcosm of the beautiful and the ugly that our systems and our communities exist with, and in.
Rent Check
USA | 2020 | 9 mins. | Directed by Jules Retzlaff, Mike Evans Jr.
RENT CHECK PREVIEW is the prequel to Mike Evan’s upcoming Web Series “Rent Check”. Rent Check is about a young Black man going through a quarter life crisis in the year 2020. Throughout the 12 episodes, the show follows Mike on his quest to find his life’s purpose while receiving guidance from an ethereal presence. The cast features up and coming rappers, singers, artists, comedians, and even talking animals from across the Bay Area.
Blackness is Everything
2021 | 4 mins. | Directed by Alba Roland Mejia
BLACKNESS IS EVERYTHING is an experimental short film shot on 16mm film celebrating the diversity of the Black diaspora thriving across The Bay Area. Black history is not confined to a month. Black experiences are not limited to a singular narrative. Blackness has many faces, bodies, cultures and identities.
Partners
