The Black Harvest Film Festival
Entering its 20th year anniversary, The Black Harvest Film Festival, an initiative of The Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St., showcases independent writers and filmmakers whose work highlights African Americans.
From August 1 through 28, the Black Harvest Film Festival will celebrate the stories, images, heritage, and history of the black experience in the U.S. and around the world.
“I gathered together a group of people from the community and invited them to join me in discussions about what kind of festival that showcased films that deal with issues and the life of the black diaspora and of African Americans and what a festival like that would be like,” said Barbara Scharres, Director of Programming and founder of The Black Harvest Film Festival. “Each year it’s grown and we feel like we’re always learning something and doing new things to develop it further and develop an audience because the whole point is to bring the audience and the films together.”
According to Scharres, The Black Harvest Film Festival has a volunteer-based Council that organizes the Festival's marketing, community outreach, and film selection efforts.
Producing the Festival is a yearlong process with the process beginning with writer/filmmaker submissions that are due in January.
The Black Harvest Film Festival also engages the community by presenting workshops hosted by filmmakers on screenwriting and film production. Other social gatherings are produced by the Festival including a speed dating event.
This past Sunday, American actor and film director, William "Bill" Duke, Jr., spoke at the Festival via Skype after his 1991 film “A Rage in Harlem” was shown.
The Chicago Citizen Newspaper asked Duke to speak about the importance of chronicling African Americans through film and on why events like The Black Harvest Film Festival are essential, in which he replied, “When you travel to different parts of this world today, [people] are astonished that you’re not speaking ebonics or that you’re not a rapper so people creating images of us that are holistic, human, and connect us to the human family - because we go through the same experience that everyone else does - I think are essential whether they are documentaries, feature films, or TV programs that show us in the right humanity; I think are really important. This Festival is essential to that kind of mission.”
For almost 40 years, the Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) has presented world-class independent, international, and classic cinema. Renamed in honor of the late film critic in 2000, the Gene Siskel Film Center presents approximately 1,500 screenings and 100 guest artist appearances year to over 65,000 film enthusiasts at its unique, sophisticated, modern facilities which have been operating since June 2001.
For more information about The Black Harvest Film Festival visit http://www.siskelfilmcenter.org/blackharvest_2014.
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