New Orleans Film Fest focuses lens on filmmakers of color

2nd November 2015   ·   0 Comments

By David T. Baker
Contributing Writer

Last month, hundreds of filmmakers set their stages in New Orleans for the 26th Annual New Orleans Film Festival (NOFF), an Oscar-qualifying regional festival that brings together actors, directors, screenwriters and other industry professionals to showcase and celebrate the business of filmmaking.

While the very name may bring to mind exclusive Hollywood-themed soirées, red carpet film screenings and a host of celebrity sightings, the reality goes well beyond the glitz and glam of a silver screen lifestyle. Amongst the glamour of the late-night parties, film screenings and competitions, there is also learning.

The New Orleans Film Society (NOFS), the non-profit organization that organizes and manages the film fest, two years ago introduced an educational aspect to the festival called Emerging Voices, a three-day mentorship program that pairs emerging filmmakers of color in Louisiana with seasoned industry leaders to help them with their professional development.

“Emerging Voices is a mentorship program where we connect filmmakers of color from Louisiana, they all have to be based in Louisiana, with national, leading film industry professionals for over three days during the festival,” said Chloe Walters-Wallace, the seasonal program director for the New Orleans Film Society.

Entry into Emerging Voices is competitive, and only five slots are available each year. Candidates must apply with a script in development, not a completed work. According to Walters-Wallace, most of the mentees they’ve had have been working in the industry but only one has a completed project.

This year, the program received 40 applications. From that pool of applicants, NOFS chose the final six (in past years, only five slots have been available but this year, NOFS added a sixth slot due to the strength of the application). This year’s mentees are Ahmed Siddiqui (Bixby), Eritria Pitts (Sorry.Stop), Allendra Freeman (Black Water), Jason Foster (The Free Southern Theater); Zandashé Brown (Black Women Are); and Kenna J. Moore (Bayou Orange).

According to Walters-Wallace, during the first weekend of the festival, the mentees are paired with more experienced filmmakers for in-depth mentoring sessions: “So, they meet their mentor, they have all these questions for them, they talk to them about their projects, they talk to them about going to industry extremes the next day. It’s a bunch of pitching to other industry folks. The mentorship preps them for that, and helps them to shape their project and their career.”

The program has its beginnings in 2013 when the staff of NOFS began discussing how to diversify the participant pool.

“About three years ago, myself and several other staff members were just brainstorming about ways to ensure that the festival specifically was engaging and providing access to all filmmaking voices,” said Clint Bowie, director of programming for the New Orleans Film Society. “We were concerned that – especially filmmakers in Louisiana – were not being able to have access to the industry types from New York and L.A., just because Louisiana doesn’t have a lot of the funders and granters and distributors and movers and shakers who are in L.A. and New York. And that’s something that we decided we wanted to do better at: being able to provide access to those industry big wigs.”

Thus, NOFS began fundraising to bring those “industry big wigs” to the festival. Initially, Bowie said, the goal was just to have these industry big wigs at the festival so all filmmakers could have access to them, but then decided to provide one-on-one meetings through a mentorship program and were especially interested in selecting a core group of local filmmakers

“We started more of an informal mentorship program where we were just making connection emails between certain filmmakers and industry reps,” Bowie said of the program’s beginning stages. “And then we applied for a grant from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences — the Oscars — to start a full-fledged mentorship program, because that first year worked really well.”

Following the success after securing the grant from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, which paid for the 2014, NOFS applied for and received a grant from National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), which funded this year’s program.

The Benefits And Challenges

Kenna J. Moore, a local filmmaker and founder of film company Ghost of Elysian Films, is a 2015 participant in the Emerging Voices program, and a winner of the NOFF 2013 Emerging Vision Award for her feature film Omitted. Moore says she learned about the program in 2014.

Moore, a graduate of LSU with a theater performance background, began her career as an actress. “I knew I wanted to be in the film industry but being an actress-in-waiting was really frustrating. Waiting on a good role, that was really frustrating,” said Moore.

“I knew I was a creator. I had stories I wanted to tell, so I just started my own independent film company called Ghost of Elysian Films.”

Following her graduation from LSU in 2012, Moore immediately began working on her first film project, and has been participating in the film fest each year since. This year, as a featured filmmaker as well as one of the mentees in the Emerging Voices program. She is currently working on a film entitled She Was Famous, a feature length narrative about a woman with bipolar disorder.

“I’ve met some great people in this program who have given me some great advice on how I should take it (her film and career) to the next level,” Moore said. “I’m really look forward to getting it to an audience.”

Moore said that the most challenging part about being a filmmaker in Louisiana is the access to major industry resources and people than it is in places like New York and L.A. who can help thrust emerging filmmakers from the Southern region, and their projects, forward onto a global stage. “Having those connects, it’s really hard to find that in the South right now, so that opportunity alone, to have that conversation with someone from Sundance, someone from Tribeca or whatever, is key. It’s key to get that knowledge about the industry.

“To actually meet someone and they say ‘Hey, I work for this company, and this is what you need to do if you’re trying to get here,’ that’s huge for me as a local filmmaker,” Moore said. “I would encourage anybody who is looking for access, especially filmmakers of color, looking for access, looking for guidance, information that you may not be able to find about the industry just locally to apply [to the Emerging Voices program].”

Moore is already mapping out her next project. She just finished a script called Bad Reps, which is a sports comedy about the 2012 NFL lockout.

Regarding the program’s future, Walters-Wallace hopes to see a lot of growth: “I’d love to see that it a.) reflects the diversity of New Orleans; b.) that we’re able to provide the work. That we’re known as a resource to the filmmakers of color in Louisiana.”

For more information about the Emerging Voices program, visit www.neworleansfilmsociety.org.

You can follow news and updates from David T. Baker on Twitter at @Tadfly.

This article originally published in the November 2, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.