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The Human Family presents Our Right to Gaze: Black Film Identities, a collection of six shorts where filmmakers gaze at themselves and their world, attempting to make sense of what they see reflected back.
From gripping drama to heart-warming comedy, Our Right to Gaze: Black Film Identities features timely stories from Black artists that take us outside of the ordinary.
Our Right to Gaze will be available on-demand from Sunday, February 14 to Sunday, February 28. Watch the 82-minute collection of films at your leisure from the comfort of your home.
Trailer for Our Right to Gaze: Black Film identities
THE FILMS
Love in Submission
by Antu Yacob & Lande Yoosuf
A Hollywood Party
by Toryn Seabrooks
Pandemic Chronicles
by Ya’ke Smith
Auntie Zariyah
by Zora Bikangaga
The Black Banshee
by Kyla Sylvers
Nowhere
by Lin Que Ayoung
About
Full Spectrum Features (Chicago), Northwest Film Forum (Seattle), The Luminal Theater (NYC), and Circle Collective(NYC) seek to champion Our Right to Gaze as a means of addressing systemic inequity within the film industry through the disruption of existing film distribution models and attitudes towards artist services and support.
The program is also designed to support the participating filmmakers first and foremost – structured so that they receive adequate compensation for their work, have the option to participate in a mentorship cohort, and have the collective support of the cross-country coalition of media partners.
Through a mission-driven desire to highlight unseen voices and present a program that steps outside of impersonal plug-and-play virtual distribution models, the collection will rely on the film exhibition and distribution expertise of the participating organizations to engage a broad constituency of exhibitors and mentors via grassroots outreach, personal relationships, and direct conversation with the artists.
The Human Family is proud to bring their efforts and these collections of films to audiences in North Dakota.
STATEMENT FROM THE CURATOR
The “Paradox of Expectation”…it’s the idea that wanting to rid yourself of expectations is a paradox – literally the expectation of no expectation. In these six films from emerging Black filmmakers, what the protagonists experience as the world they woke up to is not the one from which they’re now appearing. Are they lying to themselves about who they are, or is the truth just not what they expect, but what they deserve?
– Curtis Caesar John, The Luminal Theater
Filmmakers Forum
On Saturday, February 20, 2020, Frederick Edwards facilitated a conversation with producer/actress Kyla Sylvers and writer/director Lande Yoosuf about empowerment through story.
The interactive conversation centered around their work and experiences in the film industry, and on the importance of the Black voice in media to challenge and dismantle stereotypes created and perpetuated in a cis-gendered white male-dominated culture.
Both Sylvers and Yoosuf have short films in “Our Right to Gaze: Black Film Identities,” a collection of six short films that invite filmmakers to gaze at themselves and their world and attempt to make sense of what they see reflected.
From gripping drama to hear-warming comedy, “Our Right to Gaze” features timely stories from Black and Queer artists that take us outside of the ordinary.