Roxbury Film Festival continues gaining notoriety in 9th year

Bridgit Brown

Eight years ago, Candelaria Silva-Collins, director of ACT Roxbury, had an idea for a film festival in Roxbury.

But transforming an idea into reality requires work and perseverance.

And a lot of meetings.

“We met with the cultural economic development program at Mass Cultural Council,” says Silva-Collins. “About six months later, we met with a woman who worked for the Museum of Fine Arts and she introduced us to someone at The Boston Foundation where we pitched the idea of having a film series in Roxbury.”

It was that meeting that resulted in initial funding of $5,000. It doesn’t sound like much, but it was enough to get the festival started in 1999. The Dudley Film Festival, co-founded by ACT Roxbury, screened 14 films and, with no featured guest, still brought in 75 attendees.

A year later, it became the Roxbury Film Festival, and producer, writer, director and Roxbury native Topper Carew was the featured guest. That year, the number of attendees more than quadrupled to nearly 400.

In 2001, actor Michael Beach was the featured guest and 26 films were viewed with an attendance of 1,200. By 2002, the Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts College of Art and Northeastern University joined as collaborators, adding three locations to the list of RFF’s festivities. Filmmaker Kasi Lemmons was the featured guest that year, and more than 40 films were screened to over 2,000 people.

In 2003, Boston native and actress Victoria Rowell was featured, and in 2004, Daphne Maxwell-Reid, Hill Harper and Ernie Hudson made appearances. Actor Billy Dee Williams and filmmaker Mel Jackson participated in 2005. Last year’s festival brought in 50 times its original number of attendees and had as guests radio and television personality Russ Parr, comedian/actor Guy Torry and actress N’Bushe Wright.

Lisa Simmons, president and founder of the Color of Film Collaborative — RFF’s co-producer — says her work on the festival involves recruiting talent and celebrity guests, choosing films and handling its logistics.

“I came on as an observer in the first year, and by the second year I joined the committee,” she says.

“This year the number of films being viewed is down from last year and even though we got tons of submissions, it was difficult finding stellar films that supported the mission and the desire and the need to have quality films,” Simmons explains.

“People are really excited to talk to the guests about their films and things are really organized. I think it’s also a credit to Boston audiences because they’re actually glad to see ‘good’ black films that are not just about gangs and violence. They’re actually films about my perspective or somebody else’s, a lot of documentaries and experimental work too.

“The wonderful thing about the festival is that everybody, the filmmakers, the writers, the actors and actresses, are so excited to come because they feel like royalty, like they’re coming home. It’s the festival feel that some of them never had.”

“We’re really excited about having Susan Batson this year,” says Silva-Collins. “Susan is a native of Roxbury and one of the industry’s leading acting coaches. Her presence here is going to help us reach more people for next year, which will be the festival’s tenth anniversary.”

Batson is artistic director of Black Nexxus Inc., an acting studio and entertainment development and production company with locations in New York and Los Angeles. Speaking from Black Nexxus’ New York location, Batson said she was excited about leading a workshop.

“This will be the first time that I’ve been able to participate in the Roxbury Film Festival, and I’m so glad to see Roxbury represented through film,” she says. “I grew up on Ruthven Street and it was like coming up in a hotbed of activism at the time, due to my mother, Ruth Batson, and others. I was fortunate to be raised in Roxbury, and we were taught that we had to make a contribution, we had to do something that changed the landscape of the condition of black people, and that’s what the Roxbury Film Festival is doing.”

Terri Brown, program manager for ACT Roxbury, has been knee-deep in film festival work since the call for submissions back in January.

“This is my third year of involvement with the festival,” says Brown. “I do a lot of management and coordination with the filmmakers. I do film scouting, and I organize the submissions. I also work closely with the vendors and venues and handle systems like ticketing and guest accommodations.

“My expectation for this year is to reach an untouched audience of film lovers in Massachusetts. I want the films to help us introduce them to a friendly and artistic Roxbury and invite them to come back again.”

Allison Auldridge, marketing manager for ACT Roxbury, says she’s been doing all sorts of things, from calling sponsors to sitting in an open market in the hot sun and talking to passers-by about the festival.
“I went to [the] Tribeca [Film Festival in New York] and looked at other films that might have been good for the festival and I also contacted filmmakers,” Auldridge recalls.

“I hate to compare our festival to other festivals, but people have said that ours is more organized and have called it ‘a great filmmakers’ festival. Everyone has felt welcomed at it, and it’s small enough so that people feel important and the smaller filmmakers really like the attention that they get at our festival. I don’t know how much of the good work that we do is contributed to the all-female aspects of our committee, but I think there is something to it.”

Since next year will be RFF’s tenth anniversary, Silva-Collins hopes that she can bring Denzel Washington to Roxbury as his presence at the festival will make a positive statement about what’s going on in Roxbury.

“We’ve tried various ways to get in touch with him, and we’ll continue to try even harder,” she says. “We also tried getting Morgan Freeman for this year, but he’s working on a film project this summer.

“The problem with film here is that Boston is not perceived as a huge urban market and sometimes films by and about people of color do not get released here. People don’t understand that even though we don’t have comparable numbers of African Americans, like a St. Louis or a Charlotte, we do have a lot of people of color and a lot of the young Cape Verdean and Latino people will also support certain films, so if they’re looking at the numbers in a certain way, then they’re missing the boat.”

One of the attendees to this year’s festival will be the director of the Cannes Pan-African Film Festival, Basile Ngangue Ebelle. Ngangue attended the RFF last year and brought some of the films that were screened at RFF to the Cannes PAFF this spring. This year, a number of the films from PAFF will be screened at the RFF.

On everybody’s wish list is the idea of bringing the Roxbury Film Festival to the international level. “At this point,” says Simmons, “There is no reason why these films need to stay local or even national. I think they would get such a great international audience and there is no reason for that not to happen. Plus, we’re almost there with Basile Ngangue in attendance.”