The 14th iteration of the BlackStar Movie Competition returned to Philadelphia from July 31 to August 3 with a sturdy program championing impartial Black, Brown, and Indigenous movie and media artists. BlackStar’s dedication to uplifting such voices is particularly resonant as a result of Trump administration’s sweeping dismantling of DEI measures; the competition’s 92 movies from across the globe showcased cinema as a instrument for experimentation, liberation, and resistance. Competition director Nehad Khader wrote in this system information, “We want them to mobilize our creativity for defiance, community building and world making.”
Setting the tone was the sold-out world premiere of TCB: The Toni Cade Bambara College of Organizing (2025), a energetic biography of educator, writer, and organizer Toni Cade Bambara, directed by Louis Massiah and Monica Hernandez. Different notable premieres embody Kahlil Joseph’s genre-defying BLKNWS: Phrases & Situations (2025), an adaptation of his critically acclaimed artwork set up (full disclosure: I used to be a author on this movie), and Jenn Nkiru’s debut characteristic documentary, The Nice North (2025), which makes use of the historical past of Manchester, England, to discover the connection between structure, politics, and the physique.
The Volcano Manifesto (2025), dir. Cauleen Smith
As typical, this yr’s programming leaned towards the experimental, with a wholesome mixture of rising and established filmmakers. Amongst these had been a number of movies associated to artwork or by multimedia artists, together with Cauleen Smith and Kevin Jerome Everson, who each had entries within the Experimental class: The Volcano Manifesto (2025), a trio of movies during which Smith critiques capitalism and colonialism’s extraction of the earth’s sources, and Dooni (2025), a poignant ode to legendary queer disco singer Sylvester.
Of the art-related movies, just a few stood out as testaments to the challenges of making artwork, be they monetary, emotional, or psychological. Director Tadashi Nakamura explores all three in his documentary Third Act (2025), a portrait of his late father, Robert A. Nakamura, a photographer, filmmaker, and educator typically referred to as the “Godfather of Asian American media.” Nakamura, who was imprisoned at Manzanar, one in all 10 internment camps established in the US throughout World Struggle II, co-founded Visible Communications, the primary Asian-American media arts group, and co-directed the 1980 Asian-American characteristic movie Hito Hata: Increase the Banner (1980). Nakamura speaks candidly about how his internment at Manzanar remodeled him, instilling in him emotions of self-loathing and a need to be White, and the way artwork and political organizing helped him course of and transmute these painful experiences.
Funds Paradise (2025), dir. LaTajh Simmons-Weaver
Cash is a supply of hysteria in two art-related brief movies that screened on the competition: LaTajh Simmons-Weaver’s Funds Paradise (2025) and DeeDee Casimir’s Final Hoorah at G’Child’s (2025). Each narratives revolve round two younger Black painters struggling to make work. In Funds Paradise, protagonist Chester steals artwork provides and no matter time they’ll discover to create, checking right into a motel room for 2 hours to be able to paint. An extra nod to the artwork world will be discovered within the scene the place Chester checks into the motel, as movies paying homage to Kenneth Anger’s movies play behind the counter. Haitian-American director DeeDee Casimir additionally presents a practical portrait of the struggling artist’s life in her brief movie, which follows Naja (performed with nice sensitivity by Kailah Ami), an artwork pupil who faces eviction after spending the money inheritance she obtained from her grandmother.
Artist Kevin Jerome Everson, whose observe encompasses portray, sculpture, and pictures, renders the invisible seen in his artwork. Everson has directed practically 200 experimental movies, every rooted in his need to seize the gestures and acts of labor that fascinate him. Unconcerned with style distinctions, his movies blur the road between the archival and current day, documentary and fiction. He’s constructed a powerful oeuvre of movies that revel within the on a regular basis textures of Black life. Dooni, during which Everson juxtaposes archival footage of gliding curler skaters with a eulogy written by preacher Walter Hawkins, is a welcome addition to that trove.
Dooni (2025), dir. Kevin Jerome Everson
In keeping with the spirit of the competition, this yr’s art-related movies acknowledge the difficulties that accompany a life in artwork. These filmmakers, in contact with the lineages they arrive from, pay homage to their ancestors, crafting tributes that acknowledge the labor required to maintain one’s goals and visions alive.
