Black Public Media (BPM) awarded a total of $610,000 in film at the PitchBLACK Awards on Thursday at its seventh PitchBLACK Forum – the largest pitch competition for independent filmmakers and creative technologists developing new projects about the global Black experience – and immersive projects and creatives. The amount was the highest ever awarded at PitchBLACK. The Netflix and PBS-sponsored event, held at the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse at Lincoln Center, was hosted by Baltimore-based comedian Sir Alex and included the presentation of the BPM Trailblazer Award to Emmy-winning filmmaker Sam Pollard.
The winner of the $150,000 film prize is Zeno, a documentary film about the life of Puerto Rican fisherman and revolutionary Carlos “Taso” Zenón, who led protests against the U.S. Navy’s occupation, exploitation and environmental destruction of his homeland, Vieques Island. Puerto Rican director Juan C. Dávila and producer Camila Rodríguez Estrada accepted the grant for their film about environmental racism on an island where the majority of residents are black Puerto Ricans. The PitchBLACK Film Forum jurors were Chloe Gbai, Chris Hastings and Sabrina Schmidt-Gordon.
Frame frequency modulation, an interactive memory channel that explores images, ancestral memories, oral histories and metaphors of radio technologies as sites of possibility for the African diaspora, won a $50,000 immersive project award. Its creator is Ethel-Ruth Tawe and producer is Elisha Tawe, and they are a Cameroonian brother-sister team. The Museum of Black Joy: Ring Calls, Rituals and Rising Signs by Philadelphia creator Andrea Walls received a $25,000 immersive project award. It is a four-wall video installation designed as a cultural embrace, aligned with a multimedia narrative that puts Black Joy at the center as it emerges from history triumphantly, with style, creativity and grace. Jurors for the PitchBLACK Immersive Forum were Errol King, Angela Tucker and Jennifer Scott.
The PitchBLACK forum was moderated by advertising futurist Tameka Kee.
“Every year, PitchBLACK reminds our team and the entire industry of the amazing talent pool in our media creator communities,” said Leslie Fields-Cruz, managing director of BPM. “What this year’s PitchBLACK participants have in common is their commitment to innovative storytelling. Their work is innovative, insightful and entertaining, a hopeful harbinger of the future of public media.”
The Jacquie Jones Memorial Fund Award was presented American sons, a documentary project by Andrew J. Gonzales and Laura Varela. The $380,000 prize will help the duo complete their film, which follows a cadre of Marines after their deployment to Afghanistan as they reunite over the loss of their brother and work to heal their physical and emotional wounds to heal. The film’s PBS premiere is scheduled for 2025. The fund, made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, supports creators in the tradition of the late Peabody Award-winning director and BPM’s second executive director, Jacquie Jones, who helped promote diverse content creators. For more information about the fund, visit https://blackpublicmedia.org/for-media-makers/jacquie-jones-memorial-fund/.
The evening included a filmmaker chat between NPR host Brittany Luse and Pollard, who discussed his acclaimed career, which includes acclaimed films and series such as Eyes on the price, MLK/FBI, Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power And Mr. SOUL!and his editing of several legendary Spike Lee films. As part of PitchBLACK, a retrospective of Pollard’s films and virtual screenings will run in four cities until May 5th. In-person screenings will take place in Los Angeles (April 27), Santa Barbara (April 30) and Baltimore (May 3). After some screenings there will be discussions with the filmmaker. The New York screenings were produced in collaboration with ImageNation. For more information, visit https://blackpublicmedia.org/pitch-black/pb-2024/.
Ethel-Ruth Tawe also received the Nonso Christian Ugbode (NCU) Fellowship, an award established in 2016 named after the late BPM Director of Digital Initiatives to support creative technologists under the age of 30. The rising star has already received the Magnum Foundation’s 2022 Counter Histories Grant program for her project Frame frequency modulation, which took part in PitchBLACK and was also recently selected by the DocLab forum of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) 2023. Tawe will receive a $5,000 award.
With the 2024 PitchBLACK film and immersive grants, BPM – a Harlem-based national nonprofit that funds and distributes original content – has awarded more than $1.8 million to 23 projects since PitchBLACK launched in 2015. Some of the projects selected in previous years went on to premiere on PBS, WORLD, Create and PBS Digital. Graduates of the program have gone on to produce film, television and immersive projects for PBS, CNN, Showtime, Netflix, HBO, BET, NBC, The CW and more.
Netflix’s continued support is part of the company’s Fund for Creative Equity, a targeted initiative to help create new opportunities for underrepresented communities in entertainment. Additional support for PitchBLACK comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; donation from the Acton family; New York Community Trust; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; New York State Council on the Arts; National Endowment for the Arts; Shutterstock; Unity Charitable Fund, a fund of the Tides Foundation; and Special Foundation.
For more information about BPM, visit blackpublicmedia.org. Follow BPM on social media at @blackpublicmedia on Facebook and Instagram and watch PitchBLACK events on BPM’s YouTube channel.