On Thursday, October 29, at 6:30 pm, the Hoboken Museum is pleased to host a special “Good Trouble” installment of “Meet the Filmmakers,” a curated program of award-winning films on the theme of civic activism, including a lively discussion with the poet Cortney Lamar Charleston, of Jersey City, NJ, whose work inspired one of the films to be screened.

Hosted by Thomas Edison Black Maria Film Festival director Jane Steuerwald, the event will take place both in person at the Museum (with limited attendance, face masks and social distancing), and online.  In honor of the late Rep. John Lewis, the evening will be a “Get Out the Vote Potluck & Screening.”  Please join us and bring a dish of your choice to celebrate the people’s right to vote. 

This “Meet the Filmmakers” program focuses on issues of social justice and voting rights. Festival director Steuerwald and Cortney Lamar Charleston will discuss issues related to art, activism, and voting.

These specially curated programs are also available for viewing on demand, for free, at the Black Maria Virtual Film Festival website. Directions for viewing online are described below:

• Go to www.blackmariafilmfestival.org
• Click on “Virtual Festival”
• Click on “Curations”
• Click on “Search”
• Type in “Cortney Lamar Charleston”

Streaming is free, and donations are welcome and appreciated.

The films to be screened include:

The Night Shift – Documentary – 2020 (8 min.) by Yumeng Guo, San Francisco, CA. “The Night Shift” is a short film about an extraordinary/ordinary night shift worker, Clemencia Cardoza, a Mexica-American woman who works in the city of San Francisco. While the city sleeps, Clemencia and many others like her, work hard to realize their dreams for a better life.

Notes for My Homeland – Documentary – 2016 (9 min.) by Ed Kashi and Julie Winokur, Montclair, NJ. A Syrian-American composer responds to the tragedies instigated by the Assad regime by composing music in support of the Syrian Revolution, and performing it at great personal risk. Malek Jandali’s evolution from classical musician to passionate activist captures the transformation that the civil war in Syria has wrought on many citizens. This is a story that celebrates the power of art to catalyze social movements.

Grace – Narrative – 2020 (6 min.) by Alexia Oldini and Steven Gray, New York, NY Grace is the story of the eviction of a young woman of color from her home. Her subsequent encounters reveal the callousness of a society built to exploit the precarious situations of people like herself. In the end, she confronts her struggle head on, but finds it is difficult to overcome.

They Say I’m Your Teacher – Documentary – 2020 (9 min.) by Catherine Murphy and Lucy Massie Phenix, Portola Valley, CA. Bernice Robinson, a beautician from South Carolina, was the first teacher in the Citizenship Education Schools that taught literacy in order to pass voter registration requirements in the South during the mid-1950’s and 1960’s. She taught adults to read and write, understanding that registering to vote and engaging people in the issues that affected their lives was a key step toward changing the system.

How Do You Raise a Black Child? – Narrative – 2017 (4 min.) by Seyi Peter-Thomas, South Orange, NJ. (pictured above) This short film adaptation of Cortney Lamar Charleston’s poem “How Do You Raise a Black Child?” paints an important portrait of everyday life for a young black man growing up in America. It is an expressionistic piece that explores the delicate balance parents must strike as they steer their children toward adulthood. 

For 39 years, the Thomas Edison Black Maria Film Festival has been advancing the unique creativity and power of the short form. The Festival was founded in 1981 and is named for Thomas Edison’s original West Orange, NJ, film studio, whose resemblance to the familiar black-box shaped police paddy wagons sparked the nickname “Black Maria.” The festival is an international juried competition open to all genres and filmmakers across the globe.

The Festival’s virtual touring program reaches out to diverse audiences in diverse settings with screenings of cutting-edge, cross-genre films — narrative, experimental, animation, and documentary. Subject matter includes issues and struggles within contemporary society such as the environment, public health, race and class, family, sustainability, and much more. These exceptional works range from animation, comedy, and drama to the exploration of pure form in film and video and are the heart and soul of the festival. Learn more at www.blackmariafilmfestival.org

The festival’s Hudson County Movie Tour is made possible through the generous support of The Hudson County Office of Cultural & Heritage Affairs & Tourism, Gina Hulings, Director/Administrator.