(upbeat music) - Sixth annual festival, this has become a fixture in Detroit.

Tell me about this year's festival.

- Well for me, it's exciting, because we weaved in the taste of Black spirit.

This year's festival, again, as you heard, 72 films, four locations, new partnerships.

New relationships, expansion, expansion, expansion.

That's how I look at it.

It's gonna be great.

I think, you know, Marshalle is, I have to give it to her.

She started me with this, right?

And I remember 2020 laying in the bed and she was like, "Hey, I wanna do the Detroit Black Film Festival."

By the time she woke up, we were set and ready to roll.

This year marks a testament for us, right?

We believe that this year, we'll challenge all the years to come because we're setting the tone that we're setting something new, right?

And I think that because we're Detroit.

Detroit all day.

Detroit every day.

That this year we'll tell it, right?

We have new things.

Cecil Detroit is one of our categories where we highlight our Detroit filmmakers.

Jeremy Brockman is an award-winning filmmaker.

So his film "The Cut" is in our festival, and we have so many more films.

- You know, when we talk about Detroit films in particular, I think there are a lot of people who don't know about the sort of cinema community here.

And I guess how robust it is.

And the festival I think is a way to sort of introduce yourself to that idea to see things that we don't see in other spaces.

- I know that the community is very robust here and it's growing every single day.

The number of films that are being made, then the festival just gives us a chance to highlight the creative community that we have.

And we're really, really excited because there is a portion in our festival that highlights specifically Detroit-made films among the other films that we're showcasing this year.

- Yeah, yeah.

The cocktails part of it.

This is the second year that you're doing this?

- This is the second year.

It gave us the opportunity to merge our audiences.

Instead of creating the event to, you know, a reception or a filmmakers luncheon, we just added the Taste of Black Spirits.

And that gives them an opportunity not only to sample products, but making, I mean, engage, right?

Because films need what?

Films need products at some point.

Filmmakers need to build their relationships with the spirit brand.

So that event happens on the 27th at the DoubleTree Hotel, a great hotel that offers us the whole second floor.

So we have the Crystal Ballroom, we're bringing in E40, Ronald Isley, and several other brands.

The brothers from have a bourbon called Sable.

And the filmmakers, the film group.

- The Best Man.

- The Best Man.

So their product will be in there and several hundred.

It's gonna be a great time.

And blending that with film, I mean cinema, again, Cinema, Culture, and cocktails.

I mean, you can't lose with that.

- And the natural connection with the Taste of Black Spirits and the film festival is really like the storytelling also because there's so many brand owners that have just incredible stories who are trailblazers, who are first in their industry, and we like to highlight the stories of the brand owners as well.

- Yeah, yeah.

Let's talk about some the films.

And I guess how you curate something like this, 72 films is a lot, but I would imagine that there were hundreds of possibilities, right?

And so you come down to that 72, talk about that process a little.

- So we have 350 films this year's festival.

We have a board of judges who help us run through this process, which is not easy.

- And whittle that down?

- Right.

And we whittle it down to about, so we whittled down this year to about a hundred.

So we going over the hundred, we have the last word of course.

But at the same time, it's like, we have so many great films, this year was like, okay, wher are we gonna house these films?

So beautiful enough that we're back at the Charles H. Wright for four days, we're at the Car Center gallery, we're at the Love Building, which is our new relationship, and we're also at the Marlene Bowl there.

So we're able to break those films down and put those films in those screening places so we can comfortably do what we need to do with the Q&As and et cetera.

It is a process.

That process takes about two months after we choose the film.

- After you choose the films.

Where are you gonna watch them?

- And that's my favorite part of the festival really, is connecting the filmmakers with the audiences.

And so we have a number of people who are just traveling from around the world to be here.

Some of them are coming to Detroit for the first time.

And there's always the Q&A, and we have also just a special section for us to have further conversation with the filmmakers.

- Yeah.

It's a Black film festival celebrating, of course, Black cinema.

Let's talk about the state of Black films.

It seems to me, and I'm not someone who knows a whole lot about Hollywood or filmmaking, but it seems to me that we're in a different period now than we would've been 10 or 15 years ago with Black film.

And I guess what I mean by that is the explosion of, you know, independent filmmaking away from big studios has met opportunity for Black filmmakers as well.

So it seems like there's more, that's my impression as an outsider.

But you guys are inside.

- It's absolutely more, right?

When you think when we had, we do an event every year, annual event called Call Time.

Our very first Call Time, we had 800 folks come out that are in the film industry from Detroit specifically.

We had over 30 production teams and companies, Black teams and companies in Detroit.

There has been a surge of films on tons of platforms that we know very well that friends and family and filmmakers here have benefited from.

There has been, I think, three to 400 films in the last five years.

From out of Detroit, out of Detroit.

And they were shooting every single day.

- I also really wanna speak just on, you know, filmmaking robot as it relates to the African American community.

I think even now because of the times we're in, I think it's just even more important to make sure that Black voices and Black stories are uplifted, especially in a time where the erasure of history is happening.

So those voices are even more important.