Black Cinema Consortium 40th anniversary highlights Black film, social change and economic inclusion in SF

by Kenya Ratcliff

From April 17 to 27, the longest-running film festival in the Americas, the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF), will screen a diverse program of innovative films from across the globe, with a particular emphasis on filmmakers who call the Bay Area home. 

The Black Cinema Group (now called the Black Cinema Consortium), founded in 1985 with the mission to elevate the voices of Black filmmakers and promote Black films at the San Francisco International Film Festival, showcased its very first panel discussion, “Beyond Boundaries: The Black Experience in Media,” which featured such prominent figures as Danny Glover, Spike Lee, Carol Monday Lawrence and Bill Duke, that same year. Now, 40 years later, the BCC aims to revisit the thought-provoking questions raised during that discussion and celebrate the group’s legacy.

Jacquie Taliaferro — filmmaker, executive director of the Black Cinema Consortium and owner of his own production company, LAHitz Media — is a longtime champion of and advocate for achieving economic equity, as well as deserved artistic recognition, for the manifold cultural contributions of Black filmmakers. In fact, Jacquie has contributed commentary, reviews and features showcasing Black cinema in the SF Bay View. 

To that end, the Black Cinema Consortium is celebrating the 40-year anniversary of the “She’s Gotta Have It” screening with a two-day event presenting films that call forth both the Black community’s history and our future, bolstering our hopes while highlighting the work sorely needed in the present to redress longstanding gaps in support for Black cinematic art, its practitioners and its core audience.

On April 24, the BCC presents the 1997 film “The Buffalo Soldiers,” starring San Francisco native son Danny Glover as one of the titular post-Civil War era heroes, a sergeant in the first all-Black United States Army unit. This former slave finds himself surrounded by racist white officers while he is forced to treat the indigenous tribes in the New Mexico territory — with whom he and his fellow Black soldiers have far more in common — as dangerous, sworn enemies that must be eradicated. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion geared to consider not only the memorial erected at Fort Sumpter in honor of the Buffalo Soldiers buried there, but the enduring significance of their legacy amid the economic renaissance at the Presidio. The Buffalo Soldiers’ memorial at Fort Sumter in the Presidio stands as a testament to the contributions of Black soldiers throughout American history. However, it represents just the beginning of BCC’s efforts to ensure greater participation of the Black community in the cultural, artistic and economic renaissance taking place in the Presidio.

Jacquie observes that, while the arts community has featured prominently in the Presidio’s evolution from venerable, storied military base to a bustling civilian park and neighborhood — with business district, shopping options and entertainment, not to mention a beacon for tourists — the Black community has yet to participate in this boom. He envisions a thriving Black film production community at the Presidio that includes the very descendants of the Buffalo Soldiers carrying the torch for equality and freedom via visual storytelling relevant to audiences today. 

“We have been working on getting land at the Presidio for a Native and Buffalo Soldier Peace and Media Center long before the headlines generated by Trump and Musk wanting to take control of the park and community at the Presidio. “However, if Trump and Musk just come to the table, that would be more than the Nancy Pelosi-run Board of Trustees has done,” says Jacquie. In the spirit of truer words never being spoken, we have only to reflect upon what has happened with regard to the group’s core aims — and what should have happened, but hasn’t — in the interim four decades since BCC’s SFIFF presentation in 1985. 

One notable fact: the BCC — despite efforts to engage and partner with the SFIFF in advance of presenting these films in celebration of the BCC’s original screening as part of the 1985 Festival — is celebrating on its own at offsite venues this year. “I tried to talk with SFIFF staff at last year’s festival about this year’s events. Two African American staffers told me they were not interested. [Elon] Musk is an African American,” Jacquie points out, Musk having been born in South Africa. 

He further explains that the festival organizing committee, the top SFIFF staffers are “very intelligent about the film industry. However, they are not aware of many things that Black film industry thinkers are doing, such as seeking to own our own production companies. Lucas Films and several other film production companies are already on the Presidio. The film we are showcasing, “100 Years from Mississippi,” had a company at the Presidio do their post production. That is all right — when they can use a Black-owned post production company on the Presidio if they want to. Theater ownership is also a issue. Black Filmmakers have no theaters in which to play our films. This was a big deal this year with the Pan African Film Festival in LA. With the Magic Johnson Theater no longer around, the number one Black run film festival in the US had a hard time with the two White-owned theaters showcasing their films.”

On April 25, the BCC will screen the aforementioned acclaimed documentary “100 Years of Mississippi,” produced by Black actor and filmmaker Barry Shabaka Henley and directed by Black filmmaker Tarabu Betserai Kirkland, at Third Baptist Church in the Fillmore District. In this film, Kirkland features his centenarian mother, Mamie Lee Kirkland, who grew up in Mississippi amid a hellscape of vicious anti-Black terrorism that forced her family to flee in order to save her father from lynching. She powerfully and compellingly reflects on witnessing and surviving these events as well as many of the hard-won changes for Blacks that have materialized since in Mississippi over her storied lifetime.

Both BCC events are fundraisers to support the Black Cinema Group’s ongoing efforts to promote Black perspectives in the film industry, as well as to support two world-renowned San Francisco organizations, including this very newspaper, the SF Bay View, and the St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church. 

“The Black Press and Music have been and still are at the top of the list when it comes to preserving and creating Black Culture.” Jacquie imports. Both of these local Black institutions are in danger of joining the long list of sad shutdown stories we’ve heard and read in recent years about our community institutions, as the costs of operating in one of the most expensive cities in the world are compounded by the significant drop in the local Black population. 

April 24 screening

“The Buffalo Soldiers” starring Danny Glover

Time: Screening 6:30 p.m.. Opens 5 p.m. Post-screening events, including Jazz Reception, will last until 10 p.m..

Location: Honey Art Studios, 1981 Sutter St., San Francisco, CA 94115

This event will feature a post-screening panel discussion, awards presentation and jazz reception.

April 25 screening

“100 Years in Mississippi” produced by Barry Shakaba Henley

Time: Screening 6:30 p.m.. Opens 5 p.m. Q&A discussion to last until 10 p.m.

Location: Third Baptist Church, 1399 McAllister St., San Francisco, CA 94115.

The filmmakers will participate in a Q&A discussion after the screening.

Kenya Ratcliff, entrepreneur and lifelong cinema enthusiast, studied film at HBCU Clark Atlanta University during her pursuit of a B.A. in English at Spelman College. She served as both a high school intern/writer, then Associate Editor for the Bay View, and now serves on the SF Bay View’s Board of Directors. As CEO of ZEMINI, a People + Culture Operations consultancy, she designs and produces eCourses for small to mid-sized businesses; she also advises other entrepreneurs as a Business Advisor with the Sacramento Valley Small Business Development Center. She recently scripted and produced two videos designed to inform readers of the SF Bay View’s ongoing crowdfunding campaign and new self-service digital advertising options. She can be reached at kenya@sfbayview.com. 

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