- This event has passed.
Black Joy Film Fest
Come join us at the Black Joy Film Fest: a celebration of Black excellence and uplifting stories on the big screen!
Pack your lawn chair, bring the family, grab your favorite snacks, and settle in for an evening of film, and community under the summer sky.
JULY 23: Like Ah Boss: Journey of a Soca King: An intimate and unfiltered look into the life and legacy of one of the Caribbean’s most influential cultural icons. Often hailed as the “Michael Jackson of the Caribbean,” Machel Montano has built a career spanning more than four decades, redefining Soca music while elevating Caribbean culture onto the global stage.
JULY 30: THE DEBUTANTES: Focusing on the first group of Black debutantes in Canton, Ohio in a decade, this documentary follows the young women as they unpack the ball’s legacy and chart their path forward, both for tradition and themselves.
AUG 6: QUEEN OF KATWE: Based on the story of Phiona Mutesi, as told in Tim Crothers’s nonfiction book of the same name, Nair’s kid-friendly tale of perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds is distinguished by a rare level of authenticity and even rarer absence of sentimentality—and also features a soundtrack contribution (and on-screen cameo) by a young man by the name of Zohran Mamdani.
AUG 13: WE WANT THE FUNK!: WE WANT THE FUNK! is a syncopated voyage through the history of funk music, spanning from African, soul, and early jazz roots, to its rise into the public consciousness. Featuring James Brown’s dynamism, the extraterrestrial funk of George Clinton’s Parliament Funkadelic, transformed girl group Labelle, and Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat, the story also traces funk’s influences on both new wave and hip-hop.
AUG 27: LOST REGGAE TAPES: A newly discovered treasure trove of tapes from Studio 17, or Randy’s located in downtown Kingston Jamaica, is the starting point for this remarkable story about a Chinese Jamaican family who helped create the music we now know as reggae.