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A new film festival taking place at a Pittsburgh theater will support independent filmmakers of color and add to programming surrounding Black History Month.
The Filmmakers in Residence & Friends Festival at the Tull Family Theater will feature several documentary and narrative films as part of a program launched in 2021 “in support of underrepresented independent filmmakers who were hard hit by the pandemic shutdown.”
Running Feb. 18-24, the festival will highlight the work of Tull’s first Filmmakers in Residence, Nadine M. Patterson and Martha Richards Conley. The two women were chosen to work on their project The Unknown Tales of Lewis & Mary Latimer, a docudrama series about Lewis Latimer, an unknown Black American inventor from the Gilded Age. All ticket sales from the Festival films will benefit the project, which the Tull claims has attracted interest from a PBS affiliate.
“Both Nadine and Martha had been friends with the theater, working regularly in some capacity,” says Carolina Pais-Barreto Thor, CEO of Tull Family Theater.
A press release says Conley and Patterson have advanced the work, developing the script after meeting with the Latimer family, scouting locations, and progressing with the soundtrack.
Patterson describes The Unknown Tales of Lewis & Mary Latimer as one part costume period drama set between the 1880s and the 1890s” and one part mini-documentary about an “unknown aspect of Latimer’s work as an inventor.”
“He was also a poet and a playwright and he played the flute as well – did I mention he was also a painter?” adds Patterson.
Most of the Festival will focus on films made by Patterson and Conley. From Conley comes Lost in the Hype, a documentary about “Pittsburgh’s legacy at the intersection of race and sport.”
“We covered a lot of grounds, including the fact that municipal governments often steer money to people who already have money to build stadiums and sports facilities to the detriment of local kids who could benefit from a sports program in their neighborhood,” says Conley, who produced the film.
Several of Patterson’s films will be included in the Festival lineup. Her docudrama/comedy Tango Macbeth will also be shown, as well as Black Ballerina, another film she worked on as an outreach producer, and which she describes as “gorgeous and relevant.” Moving with the Dreaming, a film directed by Patterson, illustrates “a cross-cultural collaboration between African Americans and Aboriginal and Islander Australians in modern dance and social activism.”
The Festival will also feature We Are Free Because of Harriet Tubman. Directed by Patterson, the short film features footage of the filmmaker’s family farm in Eastern Maryland, believed to be on Tubman’s Underground Railroad route. It was also written and narrated by acclaimed poet and scholar Sonia Sanchez.
“I think it’s really unusual to have a theater, at least in my experience, open its doors to independent filmmakers in an affordable way,” Patterson says.
The festival will also feature Thomas Poole’s film Black Male Experience and his lyrical six-minute short, I Am A Man, and Jewels of Kandahar: The Women Speak, a film about widowed women in Afghanistan directed by Kalpana Biswas.
“I’m looking forward to the exposure these films are going to get,” Conley says. “There are a lot of independent filmmakers in Pittsburgh, and it’s wonderful to have an opportunity to show the films in a really wonderful theater.”
Filmmakers in Residence & Friends Festival. Fri., Feb. 18-Thu., Feb. 24. Tull Family Theater. 418 Walnut St., Sewickley. Ticket prices vary. thetullfamilytheater.org
This article appears in Feb 16-22, 2022.
