{"id":13880,"date":"2025-08-13T20:16:02","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T20:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/08\/13\/blackstar-film-festival-unpacks-the-power-and-pretense-of-cinema\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T20:16:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T20:16:08","slug":"blackstar-film-festival-unpacks-the-power-and-pretense-of-cinema","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/08\/13\/blackstar-film-festival-unpacks-the-power-and-pretense-of-cinema\/","title":{"rendered":"BlackStar Film Festival Unpacks the Power and Pretense of Cinema"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Less compelling than it could have been, Sun Ra: Do the Impossible <\/em>still shines. Courtesy BlackStar Film Festival<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What does cinema for liberation really mean? At the 2025 BlackStar Film Festival<\/a> (BSFF), which ran through August 3 in Philadelphia, that tagline resounds. So often, similar words lose meaning as a DEI-coded balm to indicate challenging the status quo; more closely, the term reveals that it\u2019s not enough to be released from captivity but also given the tools to navigate and enjoy that freedom. BSFF is an arsenal of experiences that navigate self-determination within and beyond the current structures we are entangled in, an apt practice at the advent of Black August. Even in the name, the festival conjures Marcus Garvey<\/a>\u2019s 1919-founded Black-owned shipping company, fostering exchange and economic sovereignty.<\/p>\n

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The programming operated at a steady pace of screenings, talkbacks, rest and recoup sessions unless a film featured particularly challenging subject matter. While there was encouragement to take care, the mental labor of taking in so many documentary-style films back to back was difficult, with titles becoming more challenging to digest, so a mix of virtual and in-person screenings and socializing was key. Notably, the in-person experience was sublime: we sat as one faction of amity and erudition, unified by the hmmm\u2019s, ahhh\u2019s, ohhh\u2019s and laughter aimed at the screen. Audiences were especially vocal, buzzing with questions during the talkbacks. Just as multiple modes of receiving films were honored, so were the multiple storytelling techniques. \u201cWhen white people tell a story, it\u2019s once upon a time, and when Black people tell their stories, it\u2019s like you can\u2019t believe this shit\u2026,\u201d filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson<\/a> pointed out.<\/p>\n

Many of the festival\u2019s films dealt with mythocracy in positive, ambivalent and negative ways. Christine Turner<\/a>\u2019s highly anticipated Sun Ra<\/a>: Do the Impossible<\/i> (2025), which premiered at Tribeca, focused more on the musical milieu of Sun Ra rather than on the philosophical entity, poet, bandleader, sartorialist and asexual persona donning sequins head to toe. We get a glimpse of this complexity, yet as a focal point, it would be far more interesting. Despite the film\u2019s shortcomings, it names Ra as the Godfather of Afrofuturism, and it dawned on me that his considering himself a Saturn-born archangel king speaks to the thin line between lunacy and genius that we must accept. While it is a myth that all descendants of enslaved Africans are royalty, that myth is crucial to expanding our possibilities and increasing self-assurance.<\/p>\n

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We Were The Scenery<\/em> brings representation to the foreground. Courtesy BlackStar Film Festival<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We Were the Scenery<\/i> (2025), on the other hand, is ostensibly about the flaws inherent in mythmaking, but then transcends those limitations with a detailed account of Hoa Thi Le<\/a> and Hue Nguyen Che<\/a>\u2019s roles as extras in Apocalypse Now<\/i>, a seminal film for the American study of the Vietnam War. Forced to act in the background of the film after fleeing to the Philippines from Vietnam, they talk about how action shots were achieved, removing the veil from our eyes, and point out when they and their friends are on-screen. This retelling, directed by Christophe Radcliff<\/a>, positions them as protagonists who launch forward from the scenery of their kitchen, living room and B-roll of Vietnam. The film, told partially from the perspective of the couple\u2019s daughter, poet Cathy Linh Che<\/a>, tells parts of a story often missing.<\/p>\n

And yet it\u2019s sometimes the stories that we tell that create harmful environments for self-expression. Hao Zhou<\/a>\u2019s award-nominated Correct Me If I\u2019m Wrong<\/i> (2025) is about a Chinese family fractured by state interference by way of the two-child rule. The filmmaker\u2019s mother, forced to get an abortion under the policy, fears that the spirit of her baby girl inflicts her son and causes his queerness. We see rituals of drinking a scorpion tincture, being hit repeatedly (especially in the buttocks region, for that is the \u201cblockage area\u201d), cupping, being fed corn, offering yen to a paper demon doll and countless consultations with shamans and body workers, all in an attempt to curb Hao\u2019s homosexual proclivities. The film takes the audience through a rollercoaster of emotions\u2014we laugh at the ridiculousness of it and feel profound sadness that family can betray a central part of who you are simply because belief is such a powerful force.<\/p>\n

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Correct Me If I\u2019m Wrong <\/em>considers the misguided places familial love can take us. Courtesy BlackStar Film Festival<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But how do we come by these beliefs? The surprisingly delightful film Pi\u00f1ata Prayers<\/i> (2025) interrogates childhood play and how it instructs societal norms. We come to learn through Daniel Larios<\/a>\u2019 film that the seven-pointed star form of traditional pi\u00f1atas represents the seven deadly sins, and blindfolding represents faith\u2014a tradition taught by Spanish colonizers to instruct Indigenous peoples in the Christian faith. Larios, a former Seventh Day Adventist, explores this \u201cplayful\u201d pastime and his faith in a world rife with Salvadoran gangs and government killings. The film includes home videos, a third-generation pi\u00f1ataera talking about their practice, interpretive dance and eventually, footage of the filmmaker breaking a pi\u00f1ata of himself to a soundtrack of punk music, metaphorically breaking free from the blind path of colonial thought.<\/p>\n

Is film reflective of what society is or what it can be? And is it a way to break free or a tool of enclosure? Several BlackStar screenings tackled film as a tool of representation and propaganda. Unraveling and reclaiming cinematic history amidst the violence of silent films takes place in the restored feature-length film that was the first major representation of Black American Sign Language, Compensation<\/i> (1999). Director Zeinabu irene Davis<\/a> spoke about how Deaf actors were often trained by hearing ones, like Charlie Chaplin<\/a>, who owes his slapstick comedy style to Deaf actor Granville Redman<\/a>. That echoes in the time-skipping on-screen narrative following two couples (in which one person is hearing and the other Deaf) in the early 1900s and in the 1990s; the viewer oscillates between being the eyes and being the ears through action and imagery, much like the couple\u2019s relationship. The standout scene sees Malindy (the Black Deaf character from 1910) meeting Arthur (the Black hearing character recently migrated from Mississippi to Chicago) on the beach. Arthur speaks to Malindy, and she covers her ears while shaking her head to indicate she can\u2019t hear. She moves chalk across a handheld board, but Arthur says that he can\u2019t read\u2014shining a light on the era\u2019s stark divide between new Southern migrants and Black Northerners.<\/p>\n

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Boil That Cabbage Down<\/em> reveals that joy is a necessary element of the reclamation of history. Courtesy BlackStar Film Festival<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the same vein, Candace Williamson<\/a>\u2019s Boil That Cabbage Down<\/i> (2025) takes its name from a song with ties to the racist minstrelsy that plagued early film but also predated it. Williamson opted not to replicate that harmful imagery but instead begins with the painting The Old Plantation<\/i>, attributed to John Rose<\/a> ca. 1785-1790, that hangs on her wall. The vibrant color and perceived movement inspire the choreography of reenactors who help reveal the origins of the banjo, which the filmmaker is learning to play. As Boil That Cabbage Down<\/i> progresses, we learn that the banjo was created by enslaved Black people and was once the most popular instrument in America among Black people, but its origins have been overshadowed by the uglier elements of its history. The namesake song is often the first that new banjo players learn. How does this reclamation relate to liberation? It reveals that joy is a necessary ingredient, as is carrying the past into the future.<\/p>\n

Another BSFF selection rectifying the violence of cinema was Adam Piron<\/a>\u2019s overly abstracted technical Black Glass<\/i>, which shone better in a talkback session and the \u201cNeither Saints Nor Sinners\u201d panel on The Daily Jawn<\/i> stage chat a few days later. Afterward, the intentions behind Piron\u2019s aesthetic and sonic choices were clearly an echo of Eadweard Muybridge<\/a>\u2019s The Horse in Motion<\/i> (1878), which also documented the fate of the Modoc people. In context, the static sound and extreme flashing lights of the film made sense by creating a sense of motion in Muybridge\u2019s work and containing the extreme violence of the archive. Without that context, Black Glass<\/i> was, frankly, off-putting, which may have been the point.<\/p>\n

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Black Glass<\/em> echoed Eadweard Muybridge\u2019s The Horse in Motion<\/i> from 1878. Courtesy BlackStar Film Festival<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A film that was also abstract but in a more successful way was Bex Oluwatoyin Thompson<\/a>\u2019s Another Other<\/i> (2025). In it, clear themes emerged: solidarity is crucial to liberation, as is not aspiring to whiteness. This nine-minute experimental film packs a powerful punch, dissecting the thin line between campaigning and interrogation through a clip of Claudine Gay<\/a>, the first Black president and second woman president of Harvard University, testifying in front of Congress. When asked about the university\u2019s policies toward anti-Semitism and specific disciplinary action, Gay circled the question, contradicted herself and nearly admitted to allowing anti-Semitic rhetoric on campus. As she answers, Wesley Snipes<\/a> in Rising Sun<\/i> appears on screen with his interrogators.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth subjects [Gay and Snipes\u2019 character] reveal themselves as collaborators with racist and antiblack systems\u2014even as those systems attempt to chew them up and spit them out,\u201d says Oluwatoyin Thompson. Language unlocks how \u201cneoliberalism is uncaring by design,\u201d according to The Care Manifesto<\/i>. No matter if the spectator is sympathetic to Gay\u2019s position, the system reveals itself. Thompson strips down the audio to a buzzing projector and slides, emulating her editing practice. \u201cI mimicked the visuals with my encounter,\u201d she explains. While watching the film, the captions seem to follow the audio, then a slippage of ironic commentary named the unsaid. The selection aptly shows why micro-documentaries are the new order of American cinema. Yes, it was short, but it opens up such rich dialogue that could be several books.<\/p>\n

Now, in the face of bureaucracy, violence and oppression, how do we create the world that we want to see using a fraught medium? Lydia Cornett<\/a>\u2019s Tessitura<\/i> (2025) rounds out the festival experience while answering that question. It doesn\u2019t paint a utopia but acknowledges the complex experiences of trans (enby, trans masc and trans femme) singers in opera\u2014a genre predicated on vocal athleticism and control yet seemingly a paradox of liberation. Within vocal ranges, there are gender roles or character types that singers are forced to play: \u201ctrouser roles\u201d are reserved for cis women, who are allowed to play men or be androgynous. In vignettes of character studies, we meet Breanna Sinclair\u00e9, Katherine Goforth<\/a>, Lucas Bouk<\/a> and Naomi Andr\u00e9. Some retrain their new voices after hormone therapy, but Sinclair\u00e9 has always had a voice at a higher register despite their birth assignment. In one gripping scene, we see her visiting an ENT specialist\u2019s office, where a camera probe shows her vocal cords rubbing to make a sensational soprano sound. The warmth of this moment is palpable; it is with tension that beauty emerges.<\/p>\n

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