Curated Hayti Heritage Film Festival Combined Black Culture, Film & Business

Durham, NC – Ringing in a new era for Durham’s Black film community, the 24th annual Hayti Heritage Film Festival took place this past weekend. Starting on Thursday, February 15th and concluding Saturday the 17th, the festival combined Black culture, film, and business in a celebration of the creative wealth that can often go unnoticed in this area. This was the first year that the festival was curated, taking in submissions of new films rather than simply screening those already in circulation, an effort spearheaded by Lana Garland, the festival’s curator and executive producer.

“The whole point and intention of the festival is to develop the black film ecosystem here, either people are leaving the area… or we have high level people who live here but work elsewhere,” said Garland.

Thursday’s festivities began with two young girls of the Collage Dance Company performing jubilant African Dance choreography accompanied by live percussion. Opening remarks were given by Michelle Lanier, executive director of the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission as well as the Hayti Heritage Cultural Center’s executive director Angela Lee, who affectionately referred to the city’s film movement as a “quiet storm” after the 1970’s radio show of the same name.

With humor and resonant vocalization, Garland began her remarks with an “MLK style” rendition of Drake’s popular lyric, “started from the bottom, now we’re here,” going on to articulate her ambitions for the development of a Black film program in the city. She remarked that while Black Panther, which opened the same weekend, is an important film for many in the black community, the dollars spent will go back into major Hollywood studios, not impacting the Black film ecosystem at large.

Representing the festival’s first category, “Black Love”, the live portion of the event concluded with a performance by the NCCU vocal jazz ensemble, singing a compilation of classic hits over a montage of love scenes from iconic Black movies ranging from Love and Basketball to Do the Right Thing. Following the montage, 1974’s politically charged comedic love story, Claudine was screened for the audience.

Over the course of three days, the festival screened films grouped into carefully selected nine thematic categories, all surrounding facets of politics and identity integral to the Black experience. “The Ground I Stand On” featured “short fictional films around areas of self-identity; Gender, LGBTQ, Occupational, and Race.” Durham native Isaac Green’s short film Beyond All screened in this category.

“It felt very good to have my film screen in my hometown… it felt good to be surrounded by members of my community helping to make a new era in Durham’s film community,” Green said.

Green revealed that producing Beyond All, which was filmed in Durham, was not without it’s trying moments, from the squad car used arriving on set only moments before it was needed for the scene after lengthy negotiations over its purchase, to a member of his crew suffering from mild heat exhaustion (after which the whole crew was given ice cream).

Green is currently focused on producing more screenplays, concentrating largely on true-to-life period pieces. A script he wrote about North Carolina’s Soul City, a planned community the brainchild of civil rights leader Floyd McKissick, received a commendation from Austin Film Festival, was a semifinalist at Nashville film festival, and won awards at Houston Black Film Festival and the Los Angeles Film and Script Festival.

“Real People – Reel Durham” featured documentary shorts all focused on people of the Bull City. Garland’s own work in progress, The Reservoir Series, screened in this category. Another highlight was Millennials of the Moral Movement, which was filmed at the Moral March in Raleigh, NC on Feb. 11, 2017.

The “Black Genius” category, featured a documentary produced by Durham native Ricky Kelly, Black Beach/White Beach. The film centers around the disparities in policing noticed by Kelly and others when he attended Black Bike Week in South Carolina. Public outcry against these disparities inspired the film when an accident at Black Bike Week was met with what many felt to be a discriminatory response by the police.

“Kelly [is the] perfect example of the kind of person that Hayti can help. He is a plumber from Durham who is also a biker and attended black bike week in Atlantic Beach… he is a first time filmmaker, I have never heard of anybody like that before,” Green said, noting that Kelly and his wife produced the film independently, at a significant personal cost, with no background in the industry.

The festival’s mission goes beyond simply providing a platform for the screening of Black film and the promotion of Black filmmakers. “We also [sic] were trying to take a stance politically,” said Garland. Categories like Black Future, Black Youth, and The Skin I’m In are evidence of this curatorial intention.

The two diasporic categories, Some of the Best Countries on Earth: Saint Lucia, Uganda, Guadeloupe and Some of the Best Countries on Earth: Tanzinia & Namibia were particularly aimed towards this goal.

“The best countries in the world, the two diaspora blocks, [were] in direct response about the president’s ridiculous statements about what countries are good and what countries are shithole countries,” said Garland.

Garland has big plans for the future of the festival and the development of Durham’s Black film ecosystem. “The whole purpose of having Durham-based filmmakers participate is so that we can do things like work-shopping scripts and bouncing ideas off of each other throughout the year,” she said. 

Green, who was also highly involved in the production of the festival, echoed that sentiment. “I left Durham in 2010, I felt like there were limited opportunities here especially for minority filmmakers. But what Hayti and the festival is attempting to do is to be a real hub for people of color who are creative and give them access to the industry and jumpstart careers. I was really happy to be a part of that,” he said.

The collaboration potential between different local entities like the Bull City Doc Squad, the Southern Documentary Fund, the Center for Documentary Studies and the filmmakers behind Millenials of the Moral Movement like Ambria McNeill excites Green. Executive producer Garland is also focused on expanding the economic opportunities for other Black businesses in the area.

“It’s not just an effort to do our art and do our craft but it’s also commerce, black businesses we can be doing business with, filmmakers and ancillary companies can generate business and get paid,” she said. The festival also featured a marketplace where Black vendors were able to sell their wares.

About Lana Garland

Lana Garland has worked as a Creative Director, Director, and Writer/Producer in television and film in the US and Europe. Her work has included content for HBO, BET, and ESPN in America, and TV2 in Denmark. In documentary film, she has worked on films such as Bowling For Columbine, Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool, and Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives. Her short films include Rapture and AfterLife, starring Tamara Tunie. Lana is an NATPE Fellow, a NAMIC ELDP Fellow, a Gordon Parks IFP screenwriting finalist, a Worldfest Houston finalist, and a Telly Award winner. She is the recipient of the Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artists Award and a Filmmaking Grant from the Southern Documentary Fund for her project on African American washerwomen. Her company, Insibah Media, is based in Durham, North Carolina and creates documentaries, webseries, and marketing videos for the Internet and broadcast/cable TV.