The Toronto Black Film Festival: Films of Home and Away
By Liam Lacey
The film showing at this year’s Toronto Black Film Festival (Feb. 15-20) are eclectic, with 125 films drawn from 20 countries, available in person and online.
But it’s also a selection of films that encourages connections, around race, injustice, immigration, inspirational leaders, and the idea of home and its absence.
The event opens tonight at 8 pm at the Isabel Bader Theatre, with a presentation of the 2023 Career Achievement Award to writer, producer, and director Jennifer Holness, followed by the opening film.
Letitia Wright plays a woman caught in the Irish immigration system in Aisha.
The opener, Lovely Jackson is Matt Waldeck’s documentary about Rickey Jackson, a Cleveland man who spent 39 years in prison, including three years on death row, for a murder he didn’t commit. The film is narrated by Jackson, who also participates in dramatic re-enactments. The screening will be followed by an question and answer with director director Waldeck and Jackson.
The festival closes Feb. 20 with Aisha, an Irish drama. Aisha, follows a Nigerian woman (Letitia Wright) caught in the Irish immigration system, and her friendship with an Irish former prisoner, played by Josh O'Connor (he played a young Prince Charles in The Crown.)
While most of the films in the festival are short or mid-length, the 18 feature-length films connect around themes.
Stories of Home and Away: Feature-length films about the immigrant experience include Know Your Place, about a teen-aged Eritrean boy in Seattle, who enlists his best friend to help him deliver a suitcase filled with medical supplies for a relative back home. Léonor Serraille's 2022 Cannes festival contender, Mother and Son, follows a mother and two sons from the Ivory Coast over two decades, as they build a new life in France.
Another entry from France, the psychological drama, Our Father, The Devil (Venice and Trebeca festivals) from Cameroon-American director Ellie Foumbi, follows a woman chef at a retirement home, who has a traumatic encounter with a priest she knew in her homeland in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Digging Up Bones: Carajita, which has been described as a look at bourgeois privilege and denial, explores the relationship between Sara, a white Argentinian teen-ager, whose family has relocated to the Dominican Republic after several years absence, and her nanny, Yarisa, a Black Dominican, returning to her homeland.
The South African feature 1960 follows a retired singer (reportedly modelled on the international star Miriam Makeba) who digs back into her past, and her connections to the murder of an apartheid-era policeman, against the backdrop of the Sharpeville massacre.
Colorblind, shot in Vancouver, from Iranian-Canadian director, Mostafa Keshvari, follows a single Black mother (Chantel Riley) and her sons, both of whom are colour-blind, and the family’s relationship to their white landlord (Garry Chalk).
From Germany comes Jim Button and the Wild 13, based on a children’s fantasy story published in 1962, involving a mythical island, a kingdom, dragons, pirates and the friendship between a train named Emma, its driver, Luke, and a Black child, Jim, who is trying to discover his mysterious origins.
Celebrities and Civil Rights: The documentary Kaepernick & America, looks at the reaction to NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s decision to protest police brutality by taking a knee during the national anthem, the coded racial language of sportscasters, and the outrage among some fans, media outlets and elected officials, when Kaepernick began asserting his racial and political identity.
Three films focus on internationally celebrated women singers, who were alsopolitical trailblazers. Remember Me: The Mahalia Jackson Story is a dramatic feature on the life of the gospel singer and civil rights activist, starring multi-Grammy nominated singer-actress Ledisi Anibade Young. Marian Anderson: The Whole World in Her Hand, is a documentary about the international singing star of opera and spirituals, who, in 1939, after being denied a chance to sing in one hall, performed for anintegrated audience of 75,000 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
The documentary, Cesaria Evora, follows the career of the “Queen of Morna,” from African island of São Vicente, who used her international celebrity to become a community leader and role model for other women.
The documentary The Melt Goes On Forever: The Life and Times of David Hammons, looks at the career of the multi-disciplinary contemporary African-American artist, whose sculptures, writings, video and paintings, are regarded as an important critical interpretion African-American art history.
And finally, Music Pictures New Orleans celebrates the cultural legacy of New Orleans music through portraits of four senior New Orleans musicians, including Irma Thomas, Little Freddie King, Ellis Marsalis, and Benny Jones Sr., leader of the Treme Brass Band.
All films are available online, though features are geo-restricted to Canada and a few to Ontario only. For complete information about the film schedule and other events for the Toronto Black Film Festival, go to https://torontoblackfilm.com.