ATLANTA — Black girls rock.
The closing night of the Pan African Film Festival 2014 at the Plaza Theater in Midtown went off like the finale of a 4th of July fireworks display, particularly because multiple black female directors and producers lorded on the final two film screenings.
Six women produced and/or directed the movies, the gut-bustingly hilarious Girlfriends Getaway, a Roger Bobb film about a vacation in Trinidad that goes awry, and the critically-acclaimed Belle, a period-piece epic recalling a mixed-raced raven who struggles with the dichotomy of being both privileged and an outcast.
The evening included the likes of Vaughn, producer-director Roger Bobb, Demetria McKinney, Carl Anthony Payne, Derek J, Ramona DeBreaux, legendary casting director and producer Reuben Cannon, actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw, director Amma Asante and many others.
Another note of interest is that “Girlfriends Getaway” was a collaborative effort between Roger Bobb’s Bobbcat Films and Nina Holiday Entertainment, the latter which is owned by Vaughn and the film’s writer Cas Sigars-Beedles.
The PAFF exists to churn out engrossing theater fare and television projects that illuminates the multidimensional talents from vastly underused demographics. The closing evening of the PAFF2014 in Atlanta exemplified this. Let’s hope this continues at an higher trajectory in the proceeding years.
Take a look at the photographic highlights from the PAFF2014.