2021 ‘Visions of the Black Experience’ Film Series announced

From SRQ Magazine, November 9, 2021

The third annual “Visions of the Black Experience” film series will take place from
Nov. 12-21, 2021. The free series is a hybrid program with both in-person and online screenings and events, celebrating and illuminating the historical, social and cultural aspects of Black life through film. This year’s event will showcase more than 40 feature and short narrative and documentary films, focused on vital themes like the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, the growth of Black music from jazz to house, and social justice.

The series is a collaboration between the Sarasota Film Festival, the Boxser Diversity Initiative,  New College of Florida, the Multicultural Health Institute, and the Manasota ASALH, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.

This year’s event features the locally produced crime thriller Monopoly Money, as well as the romantic drama Maya and Her Lover and the documentary Horror Noir: A History of Black Horror, an untold story of Black Americans in Hollywood horror movies.

Other films include One Pint at a Time, the story of Black brewers, brand owners and influencers across the country who are reshaping the craft beer industry; Mending Walls, a  documentary about 30 artists from different cultural backgrounds who collaborate on murals that become symbols of hope for the future; Invisible History, a new film on the little-known history of plantations and slavery in North Florida; 100 Years From Mississippi and An Outrage, about the history of lynching in the South; SNCC, the story of student-activism amid the struggle for civil rights; and Finding Fellowship, the story of three racially segregated churches that came together in the wake of Martin Luther King’s assassination.