Betting on Black

“Some days we wonder how we’re going to do this,” Hazel Joyner-Smith says. The program director of Fisk University’s Race Relations Institute, Joyner-Smith is no stranger to challenges. Less than two weeks ago, she was riding a bus with a group of Fisk students to Jena, La., site of the ongoing Jena Six controversy, where she says police and pedestrians alike made a point of passing them without looking any of them in the eye. “It solidified students behind an issue that is hard to get your mind around,” she says.

Once back, though, she was plunged into another whirlwind. To be sure, the International Black Film Festival of Nashville—the non-profit festival of which Joyner-Smith is co-founder—is a celebratory occasion: four days of features, documentaries, panel discussions and celebrity appearances, all devoted, as her daughter and IBFF co-founder Ingrid Brown says, to “telling our own stories.” But running a film festival with no paid employees, from offices loaned by Film House, on off time from their regular jobs has left both mother and daughter exhausted. When a cell phone buzzes for the sixth time in 10 minutes, the two exchange why-me looks before Brown picks up.

The upside is that the IBFF shows signs of becoming a major boon to the city and its perpetually struggling film industry. Since parting ways with Fisk after last year’s inaugural event, the young festival has made a notable leap in the caliber of films, panels and especially guests. Among those scheduled to appear at this year’s IBFF, which runs Oct. 4-6 at the Belcourt, are Debbie Allen, the multi-talent whose credits run from choreographing the Academy Awards to producing Steven Spielberg’s Amistad; writer-director Julie Dash, whose landmark 1991 film Daughters of the Dust is now part of the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry; and veteran actor Mykelti Williamson, best known as Forrest Gump’s ill-fated buddy Bubba, who will teach a character-acting workshop.

“It’s like they want to give back,” Brown says. Joyner-Smith adds that the fest has tried to bring in people who can help shore up the local crew base and give budding African American filmmakers insight into various facets of production. Composers Dig Lewis and Paul Bolotin, who’ve scored The OprahWinfrey Show and worked on films including The Lion King and Anchorman, will conduct talks on film scoring and voiceover work Friday and Saturday at TSU. Ray Daniels, a Middle Tennessee resident who wrote for TV’s Martin and The Proud Family, appears Thursday on a screenwriting panel with Danny Glover’s production collaborator Carolyn McDonald and newcomer Tamara Lockett (Set It Off 2).

The IBFF’s film selections have branched out as well. The closing night film, fresh from its Montreal premiere, is the movie version of Rebecca Gilman’s controversial play Spinning into Butter, starring Williamson with Sarah Jessica Parker, Miranda Richardson and Beau Bridges and scripted by Doug Atchison (Akeelah and the Bee). The subject matter couldn’t be more topical: a black student at a mostly white university receives racist threats, exposing shocking fault lines within the institution. (It also reflects the festival’s desire to bring in more viewers of all races.) Another area premiere is Reed McCants’ Cuttin DaMustard, a labor-of-love comedy about a theater troupe, which features Charles S. Dutton and the return of Sinbad. It screens Friday night.

Other selections range from festival-circuit favorites (the late Senegalese master Ousmane Sembene’s jubilant 2000 comedy Faat Kiné, Thomas Allen Harris’ documentary Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela) to American indie dramas (Stacie Hawkins’ The Rise and Fall of Miss Thang, about a former tap-dancing prodigy who ditches her hard-partying ways). Viewers will get another chance to see Nashville writer-director Ryan Jackson’s street drama “Baba KING,” a tough tale with gritty East Nashville location shooting. Andrea Allen-Wiley’s doc Soulmate seeks reasons for the decline in marriage rates among African American women, while Leo Hall’s Angel Unaware: The Tara Cole Story dramatizes the true-life torture and murder of a homeless manic-depressive woman.

Perhaps the best news about the IBFF, though, is that it’s an ongoing project. Through sponsorships at the Nashville Film Festival and the Belcourt, the fest has been able to pull off some major events throughout the year—the biggest being the sold-out appearance of filmmaker Charles Burnett last June at the Belcourt with his 1977 classic Killer of Sheep. Although Burnett never had the prolific career his early films should have ensured—just like Julie Dash, who worked on his rediscovered 1983 film My Brother’s Wedding—the marvelous film and its thunderous reception could only have encouraged other African American would-be filmmakers in the audience to pursue their own paths.

Hazel Joyner-Smith is fond of quoting something Burnett told her during his Nashville visit: “Sometimes the simple is important.” The simple truth is that until the Charles Burnetts of the future find their voices, and their power in the market, there’ll be a pressing need for an International Black Film Festival of Nashville. Sounds like Joyner-Smith, Brown and their volunteer army won’t be resting anytime soon.