October 31 - November 4, 2024 | Various venues

About IFF Boston: Independent Film Festival Boston (IFFBoston) was started in 2003 to provide Boston with the type of film event it had been looking for: one that discovers emerging talent and celebrates the leading edge of cinematic story tellers. Eight days in April just aren’t enough. So we’re back again to host a mini-festival with our friends at the Brattle (and the Somerville) to give you more opportunities to see great films.

RoxFilm is co-presenting the following screenings:

• ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL — Saturday, November 2 @ 6:00pm at | Brattle Theatre

  • On an empty road in the middle of the night, Shula stumbles across the body of her uncle. As funeral proceedings begin around them, she and her cousins bring to light the buried secrets of their middle-class Zambian family. Rungano Nyoni’s follow-up to I AM NOT A WITCH is a surreal and vibrant reckoning with the lies we tell ourselves.

• NICKEL BOYS — Sunday, November 3 @ 1:45pm | Brattle Theatre

  • Chronicles the powerful friendship between two young Black teenagers navigating the harrowing trials of reform school together in Florida. Based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Colson Whitehead

GLOBEDOCS FILM FESTIVAL

October 22-27, 2024 | Various Venues, In Person + Virtual

Join us in supporting our friends at GlobeDocs Film Festival as they host their 2024 film festival this month!

GlobeDocs 2024 celebrates the true stories told in documentary films, and the artists and visionaries who bring them to life. The 10th Annual GlobeDocs Film Festival October 22 - 27, 2024 will feature both in-person and virtual film screenings followed by engaging conversations with Globe journalists and filmmakers.

RoxFilm is co-presenting the following screening:

ERNEST COLE: LOST AND FOUND - New England Premiere!

Sunday, October 27, 2024 | 1:00PM | Brattle Theatre

Directed by Raoul Peck; Produced by Tamara Rosenberg, Raoul Peck; Cast: LaKeith Stanfield

(France 2024, 105 minutes)

In this Cannes prize winner for best documentary, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro) chronicles the life and remarkable work of Ernest Cole, one of the first Black freelance photographers in South Africa. Cole fled South Africa in 1966, lived in exile in the U.S., and published his landmark book of photographs, House of Bondage, which denounced apartheid and cemented Cole’s place as one of the great photographers of his time (at the young age of 27). Following his death, more than 60,000 of Cole’s 35mm film negatives were inexplicably discovered in a bank vault in Stockholm, Sweden in 1997. Telling his own story through his writings, and the recollections of those closest to him, ERNEST COLE: LOST AND FOUND is a fascinating reintroduction of a pivotal Black artist to a new generation.

BOSTON ASIAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL

October 17-27, 2024 | Various Venues, In Person + Virtual

Join us in supporting our friends at the Boston Asian American Film Festival as they host their 2024 film festival this month!

The Boston Asian American Film Festival (BAAFF) empowers Asian Americans through film by showcasing Asian American experiences and serving as a resource to filmmakers and the Greater Boston Community. The festival is here for YOU—to see and been seen, to hear and be heard— as individuals exploring the joys and challenges of a collective community. Check out the festival trailer here.

CineFest Latino Boston LLC is an annual film festival conducted in Boston, highlighting stories by and about Latinos. The festival is committed to using the power of film to break stereotypes, bring cultures and communities together and reveal the complex issues affecting the Latinx community in the United States, as well as communities in Latin America and Spain.

The ROXFILM@Home Pass grants access to all online screenings. Tickets and passes must be purchased by June 30, 2024 at 11:59PM EST. Once you have your tickets, films are available to watch beginning 10 am on June 27 through July 3rd at 11:59pm EST.

ONLINE PROGRAM LINE UP:

BLOCK 1: ART MATTERS

Art21: Linda Goode Bryant

Directed by Chiemi Karasawa

14 minutes | All Ages

Artist Linda Goode Bryant builds communities and institution, most notably the gallery Just Above Midtown (JAM), which she started in New York City in the 70s. Following Goode Bryant as she prepares for an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art marking 40 years after JAM first opened, this short documentary looks back at how Goode Bryant brought artists from across the city and the country together and made a space for experimentation in Black and contemporary art and became home to vital conversations.

Art21: Hank Willis Thomas

Directed by Malika Zouhali-Worrall

14 minutes | All Ages

As a child, artist Hank Willis Thomas was told he stared too much and asked too many questions. Today, these very attributes shape his artistic practice, which pivots on the theme of perspective. This short film follows Thomas as he works on The Embrace (2023), a public memorial to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King to be installed in the Boston Common, and traces how he draws from his background in photography to augment his work with other media and translates the part of an image that impacts the viewer into three-dimensional space.

The Frame Buffet

Directed by Nikolai Alexander

11 minutes | All Ages

A dive into the world of Roxbury-based artist, Nygel Jones who fuses woodworking & painting to construct art in ways, that extend beyond known existing geometric shapes. The documentary follows Nygel as he is preparing for his first ever solo exhibit at Roxbury’s Hibernian Hall. Witness the art of woodworking and painting as Nygel takes us through his intimate journey, revealing the inspiration and skill behind his creative process.

HAMAPAH/THE MAP DANCE-ON-FILM

Directed by Daniel Banks

30 minutes | All Ages | Trailer

HAMAPAH/THE MAP DANCE-ON-FILM (30 min.) chronicles dancer and choreographer Adam W. McKinney’s return to his ancestral homelands—Benin, Poland and United States (Arkansas, Missouri, Montana, and Wisconsin)—to trace the intersections of his African, Jewish and Native American heritages. Directed by Daniel Banks and filmed by documentary filmmaker Laura Bustillos Jáquez, the work was created over a four-year period as a way to investigate the possibility of healing transgenerational traumas. HaMapah/The Map Dance-on-Film explores issues of mixed heritage identity and ancestry and offers a complex, powerful story about humanity and connection.

The Cinema of Marie-Josephe

Directed by Jil Servant

52 minutes | All Ages | Trailer

Marie-Josèphe Yoyotte is the first black editor in French cinema and one of the greatest. She has worked with the most famous directors of French cinema and has edited unforgettable films such as the “400 Blows” by François Truffaut or “Sugar Cane Alley” by Euzhan Palcy. Let’s re-edit time!

BLOCK 2: REDEMPTION

Concrete Rose

Directed by Khalid Sena
16 minutes | Ages 16+

Marcus a recently released Ex con has difficulties integrating back into his ever-changing community. He quickly becomes enticed to return to his old life but meets an older woman who welcomes him to work in a garden where he finds redemption and peace.

A Clean Slate

Directed by Tran Hoang Calvin
14 minutes | Ages 16 +

This uplifting documentary follows Shanyeill McCloud’s work helping the formerly incarcerated expunge their records and start their lives again.

Tomato Soup

Directed by Joshua Mori, Bret McKee
9 minutes | Ages 16+

Two people living on the streets trade secrets and give one another compassion that reinvigorates their sprits.

Figure of Speech

Directed by Gordon (Hei Yuen) Chan
39 minutes | Ages 16+ | Trailer | Content Warning: Sexual Assault

A high school graduate is faced with an impossible decision right before her commencement speech – to call out a rapist, or protect the identity of her late friend.

BLOCK 3: HISTORY TOLD

Paul Laurence Dunbar: A Documentary

Directed by Frederick Lewis
1 hour 55 minutes | All Ages | Trailer

A documentary about the life and legacy of Paul Laurence Dunbar, the first African American writer to gain national and international fame.

Guardians of the Flame

Directed by Daniel Wolff

1 hour 10 minutes | All Ages | Trailer

Undeterred by decades of prejudice, post-Katrina neglect, and ongoing appropriation of their traditions, three generations of the extraordinary, multi-talented Harrison family guard their legacy and define what Black masking culture means in New Orleans today.

BLOCK 4: ACTIVATE

The War Torn Drum

Directed by Derek A Ham
12 minutes | All Ages | Content Warning: Gun Violence | Trailer

In the late 1860’s, a U.S. Marshal bonds with a post Civil War drummer boy in their search to track down a wanted criminal.

Mosiah

Directed by Jirad
40 minutes | All Ages | Trailer

Marcus Mosiah Garvey, a Jamaican-born political activist and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), is on trial in New York in 1923. Following the leadership of J. Edger Hoover & the BOI (later, the FBI), the government has charged Garvey with mail fraud in connection with selling stocks for the Black Star Line – a shipping line designed to forge a link between North America and Africa.

Malcolm X

Directed by Adrienne T. Hawkins, Ronnie T. Thomas, Akili Jamal Haynes & Joe Gonzalez

14 minutes | All Ages

Malcolm X and the relationship to race in America.

BLOCK 5: FOR LAUGHS

Moira’s Meats

Directed by Elijah Brewer
11 minutes | All Ages

A young woman‘s impractical idealization of love is put to the ultimate test when she discovers that she is a character in her favorite romance novelist’s latest book.

Of the Comics (Clean Series) – My African American Experience

Directed by Pat Treuer
47 minutes | All Ages

Join 5 standup comedians from the African American Community as they share their stories & experiences through standup comedy as individuals in the first half and through a roundtable as a group in the second half!

BLOCK 6: ABOUT FAITH

gOD-Talk

Directed by Kim Moir

1 hour 55 minutes | All Ages

This film is the culmination project of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture, in association with the Pew Research Center, five-year study of Black Millennials and faith. gOD-Talk explores the lives of seven Black Millennials—Atheist, Buddhist, Christians, Muslim, African Traditional Religion, and Spiritualist—and the challenges and discoveries they have with faith in the 21st century

BLOCK 7: EDUCATION

The Highest Standard

Directed by Isara Krieger

1 hour 27 minutes | All Ages

Hopeful Boston Public School students are given a chance to dramatically alter their paths through an alternative school year. The journey they embark on is longer than they could ever imagine: the goal is to access the promising futures that the most elite education spaces provide, but what will be the cost? As high school seniors, four years later, the students revisit their journeys and reflect on that question.

BLOCK 8: AFTER THE LONG RAINS

BAADA YA MASIKA

Directed by Damien Hauser

1 hour 30 minutes | All Ages

Ten year old Aisha is given a school assignment to figure out what she wants to be when she grows up. She soon realizes that everyone is taking over their parents‘ businesses and professions, but she has bigger dreams. She wants to go to Europe and become an actress. Her plan is to become a fisher so that she can sail to Europe, but her mother thinks that fishing should be left to men. Despite all this, she meets a fisherman and alcoholic named Hassan, who promises to teach her how to fish.