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Black History Month at VIFF

2024/01/24 (Wednesday)

Celebrating Black Futures 

 

This February, Vancouver’s premiere independent cinema VIFF Centre honours Black History Month and celebrates Black voices with two new series guest-curated by Union Street director Jamila Pomeroy and Vancouver Art Gallery’s Kika Memeh, along with a free screening of Mighty Jerome in tribute to the late Charles Officer.

The Celebrating Black Futures film series brings together Black & African films that reflect the present and exciting future of cinema. In three feature films and a series of shorts, these filmmakers present a contemporary snapshot of the multilateral nature of African, African-American, Caribbean, and Black Canadian culture and cinema.

Babatunde Apalowo’s All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White tells a tale of forbidden love in an unsupportive society. Sam Pollard and Ben Shapiro’s Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes, a necessary and revelatory documentary about the American jazz legend. Kelly Fyffe-Marshall’s When Morning Comes is a familiar tale of Jamaican-Canadian immigration.

Through colorful visual rhythms and dynamic storytelling, these stories of love, immigration, pain, ambition, and family are representative of the new wave of Black and African cinema.