Seattle Black Film Festival Is Back With a Slate of Thought-Provoking Films

by Jas Keimig

A chaotically sweet tale of a couple and their cat. A poetic documentary about creativity and the prison system. A celebration of a classic cowboy comedy.

Those are some of the stories that will play out on screen at the 21st annual Seattle Black Film Festival (SBFF) from April 25—28. Hosted at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute and Washington Hall in the Central District with a selection of movies available online, this year's iteration of SBFF will include over 60 feature-length and short films. Organizers have pulled together work centered around the theme of carceral, spiritual, and imaginative liberation.

"There's a couple of really great films that have come out this year about prison reform — that seemed to be a big theme for this year," said Isabella Price, a filmmaker and film program manager at LANGSTON Seattle, the nonprofit arts organization that guides programming at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute. "So then it became like, OK, let's start thinking about picking unusual films, films that are by Black creators that are not films about police brutality or slavery or suffering, but are different kinds of stories and different kinds of perspectives."

Contessa Gayles' Songs from the Hole opens the festival with a coming-of-age documentary that focuses on the story of James "JJ'88" Jacobs, a musician who was incarcerated as a teenager for committing murder. As JJ'88 writes his album in solitary confinement, the doc explores forgiveness, creativity in the face of barbarity, and prison rights. Price says she was struck by the film when she saw it at South by Southwest and was impressed by the "poetic language" Gayles used when constructing the movie. Both JJ'88 and producer Richie Reseda will be present at Langston for a post-screening reception on April 26.

Other SBFF highlights include closing night film Goodbye Julia, a drama about a North Sudanese former singer who looks to redeem herself for causing the murder of a man from South Sudan (the first Sudanese film in Cannes' Un Certain Regard section); a documentary about the world's first Black supermodel, Donyale Luna: Supermodel; as well as Kokomo City, a documentary about Black trans women who are sex workers in New York City and Georgia. SBFF will also host a 50th-anniversary screening of Blazing Saddles, the Mel Brooks-directed Western satire about two silly frontiersmen played by the late Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder.

Though SBFF brings films from across the nation and globe to Seattle screens, it also highlights and uplifts creators who have made an impact in our local film scene. One unmissable film is Netsanet Tjirongo and Bryan Tucker's short documentary Savi the Cat, a hilarious and touching story of a couple (one Black American, one Kenyan) whose new marriage is put to the test with their adoption of a rascally cat named Savi. When I saw it at the Seattle International Film Festival last year, the entire theater fell in love with Savi — and I don't even like cats!

The 2024 Artist Spotlight is dedicated to Justin Emeka, an actor, playwright, and filmmaker who spent years at Langston in the late 1990s and early 2000s, crafting and putting on plays featuring the Central District community. A short documentary, Returning to the Source, about Emeka's career, as well as his two short films, Six Winters Gone Still and Biological, will be featured this weekend.

Six Winters Gone Still is a day in the life of a young man who drives around the city tying up loose ends and saying goodbye before going to prison, based on William Shakespeare's Richard II. And Biological follows the story of Jewel (played by South Seattle rapper Rell Be Free) who's chasing success when he finds out the mother of his child has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Though Emeka now lives in Ohio, where he works as a tenured professor in theater and Africana studies at Oberlin College, he shot Biological last summer on location here in Seattle. The city and Langston still mean a lot to him. "[Langston] is a really dear place to me. So to be able to come back about 30 years later is exhilarating and wonderful," said Emeka in a recent interview. "Whenever I walk into Langston Hughes, it's like I'm going into a family reunion because I know the building so well."

Also screening in Emeka's artist spotlight bloc are two Rell Be Free music videos for his songs "BLEST" and "RAINIERAVES." The rapper suggested that his videos playing before Emeka's Biological would give some continuity to his character's story while also showing off more Seattle talent. For Price, the real mission of the Seattle Black Film Festival is to let the world know that our Emerald City is a place for Black filmmakers.

"There is no other major Black film festival in the Pacific Northwest besides ours. We need Black filmmakers from all over the world to know that this is also a hub for them, there's also fans and potential audiences for them to build in the Pacific Northwest," said Price. "We've been here for over 21 years, and for us to continue to be here is input and output. We're outputting fantastic films into the world from people here that are doing such great work. But then also bringing different films from all around the world to the people of Seattle."

Get tickets and more information about the Seattle Black Film Festival over on its website.

Featured Image: "Biological" is one film from SBFF's Artist Spotlight bloc highlighting the work of Justin Emeka. (Photo by Haley Watson, courtesy of Seattle Black Film Festival.)