The annual Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival returns with a diverse array of shorts and features tomorrow, August 6. If you’re heading to the vineyard this week, here’s a sampling of short films you may want to check out. For a full schedule and tickets, visit mvaaff.com.
FIRST DATE
After screening at the California International Shorts Festival, San Diego Black Film
Festival, and San Francisco Black Film Festival, this short centered on family relationships, directed by Kristen Carter, returns to the east coast.
Plot: A young woman has an emotional encounter with a familiar stranger.
DARA JU
Afrinolly Short Film Competition winner by Anthony Onah.
Plot: A young Nigerian-American desires a better life for himself and for his mother. But when a lie he tells leads to an unexpected reckoning, he’s forced to confront a deeply personal truth.
BARBASOL
We’ve kept up with this short by Ralph Scott since its Urbanworld Film Festival premiere last fall.
Plot: A man desires a bond with his elderly father, but realizes that he is running out of time due to his father’s increasing dementia. What he comes to realize is that he needs to now turn his attention to his own son.
BREAKING NIGHT
Yolonda Ross (Treme, Yelling to the Sky) makes her directorial debut with this hybrid short film/music video co-starring Clarke Peters.
Plot: A woman experiences a metamorphosis after leaving life in a small town to venture out into the world, ultimately changing her own perception of it by daybreak.
DAUGHTER OF FORTUNE
This short period drama by USC grad Dawn Kamoche to harks back to the issues of Imitation of Life, and co-stars T’Keyah Crystal Keymah.
Plot: In the late summer of 1955, Hollywood star Cynthia Beckley has everything a woman could want—a Beverly Hills mansion, a handsome fiance, and international success. But when her estranged sister dies, Cynthia’s long buried secrets threaten to reappear and destroy everything she’s worked to achieve.
SWEET HONEY CHILE
This Princess Grace Award and Adrienne Shelly Foundation-funded short by Talibah Newman has screened at ABFF and Rooftop Films.
Plot: A young boy is larger than life, but is trapped within the confines of an absurd, suffocating world weighed down by the trappings of poverty and a short fused, short-sighted mother.