The anticipated annual film festival dedicated to the city’s Black cinema landscape is set to return on Aug. 20 with 105 official film selections from across the globe — and it’s celebrating 16 years in business.
“We are glad that we can say we stood the test and we’re still here being a platform for the amazing stories we have to tell about the culture of people of color from around the world,” BronzeLens Executive Producer Kathleen Bertrand said.
On July 31, a crowd of creators and cinephiles packed into the Mary Schmidt Campbell Center for Innovation and the Arts at Spelman College. Inside the theater, attendees got a peek at the upcoming screenings and events.
The festival officially runs from Aug. 20 to 24, with a pre-festival panel discussion on Aug. 7, “Cinema and Social Justice” day on Aug. 24 and a host of panels and other events.
It’s a busy year for BronzeLens. The festival started in 2009 as a way to draw national and worldwide attention to Atlanta as a “film mecca” for people of color. In its first year, the festival showed 23 films. This year the organizers will show over 100 shorts and features.
“The films, as I look at them, represent storytelling in a unique manner that explores different situations,” Festival Artistic Director Deidre McDonald said. “Be it narrative, features, dance or music, each story gives insight into the lives of people of color, particularly of African Americans.”
Over five days, the festival will kick off at Spelman College before moving to the Tara Theatre for screenings. There, the festival will show a packed calendar of movies from Angola, Ghana, Pakistan, South Africa and others.
“The beautiful thing about viewing films from everywhere is that we found we have so much more in common than not,” Bertrand said.
Bertrand said the films tell common stories from international locales. It may be a film about a family relationship from Nigeria or Nevada, the struggle for education in Korea or Kansas. McDonald sees it as a way to show what “humans have in common.”
“We like to curate the films so that you might be looking at a subject from different angles,” McDonald said.
Thirty-three of the films will see their world premieres at BronzeLens, and 19 films are Georgia-made.
BronzeLens will host the second annual BronzeLens Filmmakers Ball and Sweet 16 celebration at Atlanta City Hall on Aug. 23. Later, the BronzeLens awards will take place at the Ray Charles Performing Arts Center.
The awards are a festival highlight, particularly because BronzeLens is an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences qualifier. The film to win the BronzeLens Best Short Award may be eligible to compete for the annual Oscar.
The festival is a major opportunity for independent filmmakers, but it’s also a chance to celebrate a lasting and diverse cinema landscape.
“In times like these, the work that we do is more important than ever,” Bertrand said. “There are entities at work that want to shut our voices down, that want to erase our history, and in some instances just want to erase who we are as people, and what film does is document who we are.”
Tickets are available at BronzeLens.com.
The article conveys the cultural importance of the film festival and its role as a beacon for stories that capture the shared human experience across continents.
@Geometry Dash
Great article! It’s inspiring to see the BronzeLens Film Festival continue to grow and support diverse voices in cinema. Events like this play an important role in showcasing powerful stories from around the world and bringing communities together.