At Black Harvest, a curator and filmmaker offer different perspectives on what it means to create space for Black stories—and what the industry still needs to support them. On opening night of the Black Harvest Film Festival, filmmakers and moviegoers gathered inside the Gene Siskel Film Center in downtown Chicago. Cameras came out, conversations formed in the lobby, and films made by Black filmmakers from Chicago and around the world were about to fill the theater. The air carried that distinctive pre-screening buzz—a blend of celebratory reunion and quiet anticipation as directors adjusted lapels, festival staff guided ticket holders through the doors, and patrons lingered beneath the marquee light.But behind the celebration was a question that Black filmmakers and programmers have been negotiating for decades: Who gets to define what Black cinema looks like?
To understand where that definition stands today, I spoke with Jada-Amina, curator of Black Harvest, and Brooke Obie, filmmaker of A Bonitou. For Jada-Amina, the festival's curator, that means creating a program that allows Black filmmakers to tell stories from their own perspectives. For Obie, a filmmaker and critic, representation is only part of the equation. Black filmmakers also need the money, access, and resources to make those stories possible.
Who Gets to Tell the Story?
For Jada-Amina, the curation process begins with a clear, uncompromising commitment to authorial control and structural intent. In an industry where marginalized experiences are frequently packaged through an outside lens, establishing who holds the camera is not a minor detail—it is the foundational boundary of the entire festival. “The joy of curating a film festival where we only accept films by Black filmmakers, not just Black stories with Black people in it, is that there is an authenticity to the breadth of our experience, the breadth of our humanity,” Jada-Amina said.
Black Harvest deliberately prioritizes Black filmmakers at the helm, maintaining a policy that ensures Black directors and creative leads remain the primary authors of the screen work being shown. This policy directly addresses a persistent historic vulnerability across film history: a pattern where Black characters, struggles, and visual cultures are placed on screen as compelling subjects, while non-Black directors, producers, and executive suites retain absolute control over budget allocation, narrative framing, and final cut privileges. When non-Black creators control the frame, the nuance of the community's interior life is easily flattened into trauma tropes or palatably digested themes tailored for external approval. “We've seen so often that our stories are being told by people who aren't us, and those are the ones that get support,” Jada-Amina explained. By enforcing this criteria, Black Harvest functions as far more than an annual showcase for surface-level representation. It operates as a protected space for authentic storytelling where Black artists retain full sovereignty over their images, ensuring that the work screened reflects genuine self-determination rather than external interpretation.
What Makes a Black Film?
Creating space exclusively for Black filmmakers does not mean enforcing a rigid orthodoxy or demanding a singular stylistic aesthetic for what a "Black film" ought to look or sound like. On the contrary, opening the doors wide reveals an immense spectrum of form, genre, tone, and narrative technique. “Black filmmaking is as varied as Black people. We're not a monolith, and our films aren’t a monolith,” Obie said. Obie’s own trajectory as a director vividly illustrates that artistic fluidity. She originally wasn't even planning to make a film; she brought her camera to a family reunion in 2018 simply because she wanted to document and understand her family's history. What started as an intuitive personal record quickly evolved into a deeper archival exploration, ultimately transforming into her documentary A Bonitou. “I became a filmmaker in the process of just trying to find out who my family is and where we come from and who I am, really,” Obie recalled. Her experience highlights how Black cinema routinely expands beyond studio-mandated commercial genres, predictable trauma arcs, or formulaic Hollywood tropes. It takes shape through deeply intimate investigations into lineage, oral memory, geography, and personal identity. When artists are permitted to follow their own curiosity, the definition of Black film naturally expands to encompass quiet personal reflection alongside grand narrative fiction.
What Does Authenticity Look Like?
When evaluating what truly elevates a piece of cinema, both the programmer and the artist arrive at the same core necessity: centering complex, uncompromised Black humanity above all else. For jada-amina, that evaluation hinges on structural perspective and narrative perspective. “My rubric is really centered around the way stories are being told and how they're holding space for our subjectivity,” she explained. Holding space for subjectivity means treating characters not as symbols, lessons, or rhetorical points in a social debate, but as active participants with internal logic, vulnerability, and agency. For Obie, authenticity comes down to the emotional intention and spiritual care existing behind the lens. “The films that really resonate with me... are films where you can feel that the filmmaker loves Black people,” Obie shared. While Jada-Amina approaches the work through the lens of narrative framework and Obie focuses on emotional intent, both perspectives converge on a shared, crucial principle: Black people should be allowed to see themselves on screen as complicated, full human beings. They deserve screen real estate that allows for grief, joy, absurdity, contradiction, silence, and grace without the burden of having to represent an entire race to a skeptical viewer. “I want Black people to feel loved. I want Black people to feel seen,” Obie added. That emphasis on love and internal complexity gives Black cinema its emotional center, steering the conversation past superficial visibility metrics and toward meaningful interiority.
Space Isn't Enough
Providing filmmakers with a festival platform and a receptive audience, however, does not automatically dismantle the formidable structural barriers facing Black directors across the broader film industry. Obie offers a sharp, direct critique of institutional pipelines that frequently stall creative careers under the guise of professional development. “We don't need any more training programs. We don't need any more mentorship. We need money to do and execute the vision that we have and allow the world to see it,” Obie said. Obie argues that traditional Hollywood diversity initiatives often trap Black artists in perpetual educational loops—shuffling directors from one grant workshop, shadow program, or entry-level fellowship to another without ever cutting the check required for feature-length production. True equity, she emphasizes, does not mean endless advice; it requires direct financial capital, equal access to physical equipment and industry networks, media attention from major critical outlets, and robust theatrical and streaming distribution pipelines so everyday audiences can actually access the finished work.Without sustained financial investment and guaranteed distribution pathways, festival recognition risks remaining an isolated sanctuary rather than a catalyst for long-term career sustainability.
Why Chicago?
The ongoing vitality of Black Harvest relies heavily on its unique relationship to its host city and local audience.“It is my goal to cater to the folks who have really kept this festival alive for 32 years and also welcoming the filmmakers who may not be from here, also to have that exchange,” Jada-Amina noted. With over three decades of institutional history grounded at the Gene Siskel Film Center, Black Harvest serves as both a neighborhood institution and an international hub. Curated blocks like Shorts from the Block highlight homegrown Chicago storytellers, placing locally rooted narratives directly alongside submissions from directors across the African diaspora, Europe, and the Caribbean. This intentional programming creates a vibrant dialogue between Chicago’s distinct neighborhood realities and global Black experiences, anchoring the festival in a tangible sense of place while fostering global artistic exchange.
Defining the Future
So, who gets to define Black cinema? At Black Harvest, there isn't one single answer or governing authority. It belongs to the curator deciding which stories deserve a room and a screen, to the filmmaker turning intimate family history into a lasting visual document, and to the audiences sitting together in the dark, deciding what they recognize in what they see. The Black Harvest Film Festival runs now through the 15th at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Gene Siskel Film Center. Ultimately, defining Black cinema is not about locking the medium into a rigid set of rules, ideological expectations, or commercial boxes. It is about protecting the ongoing freedom of Black storytellers to stretch the medium as wide, complex, unpredictable, and uncontained as the lives they portray.
