Jeff Friday can name nearly every film and director making movies with predominantly black casts during the late 1980s and early 1990s, the period he calls the “glory days of black independent film.”
“That [period] followed Spike Lee and [his film] She’s Got To Have It in 1986. So from that point on, it was New Jack City, it was Hollywood Shuffle, it was Keenan Wayans films and, you know, Soul Food and The Preacher’s Wife and How Stella Got Her Groove Back and Love Jones…and Set It Off… And that was all between ’94 and ’99,” says Friday, clearly animated by nostalgia. “And we didn’t realize how great that was and how rich — how rich the Hollywood landscape was about black culture.”
The 48-year-old former advertising executive, with a degree from Howard University and an MBA from New York University, was tapped in 1997 by Uniworld Group to helm the Acapulco Black Film Festival, which Uniworld was sponsoring. He says the wide variety of films during that heyday nurtured a generation of black directors who followed Lee’s example, from F. Gary Gray to John Singleton to Antoine Fuqua and others. But he says things changed drastically when the 90s were over.
“Then [the year] 2000 hit, and the culture of studios changed,” Friday says. “You know, the culture became blockbuster [movies], international sales, sequels and, you know… So now in 2012, the trajectory, there is none. There are essentially two or three films a year, in the past three or four years – if you count them … that are either directed by or made for an African-American audience.”
Friday says as slim as the pickings are for black audiences wishing to see varied representations of themselves, African-American moviegoers are not alone. “Latino [audiences] are no different; probably worse. Studios have really gone away from niche filmmaking. They’re going for the home runs now.”
And yet, with the ABFF, renamed the American Black Film Festival when it moved to Miami, Florida in 2002, continues to provide a platform for the full variety of black cinema. Now in its 16th year, the film festival, which opened Wednesday, showcases feature length films, shorts, documentaries, and in 2012 for the first time, “webisodes” — short, often 5 minute or less mini-series intended solely for viewing online.
Friday, whose company, Film Life, will begin producing programming of its own this year, including for Magic Johnson’s Aspire network and for the Internet, says the idea for the film festival started at another, much larger event.
“I’d just come back from the Sundance Film Festival in January of 1997,” Friday says, “and I’d gone to [a film festival in] Japan in May of ’96. And one of the things that I took away from those two experiences, and they were both great events, but they really did lack diversity as it related to the audience and as it related to the art — to the films.”
At the time, Friday was heading UniWorld‘s film division. “My boss, Byron Lewis, and I were talking about my experience at both events. And the question came up over this lunch: do you think there should be an African-American version or an African version [of Sundance]? And I said, you know, interesting that you say that, because while I was there I was thinking about that. Why don’t these big festivals really showcase films by people of African descent? Are we not making movies, or are we just not being invited to these events? Do we not know about them? So we decided to just try one.”
Friday calls it a “fortunate accident.”
“That conversation happened in January of ’97, and we decided to try our first one in June of that same year,” he says. “So in less than five months or so we set course on the [then] Acapulco Black Film Festival.”
Friday says the first festival, in June of 1997, attracted about 190 people. “It was magic,” he says, beaming through the telephone. “I mean, Halle Berry was our rising star, and people like Morgan Freeman and Bill Duke and John Singleton and Robert Townsend came. And so, it just was a really magical experience. That’s the only way I can describe it. And we realized from that point on, we answered our own question – we realized that there really was a need for something like this that welcomes filmmakers of African descent. And that’s the story. And sixteen years later, we’re still talking about it. So it’s been, like I say, it’s been a very fortunate accident.”
And while these days, the festival attracts more than 5,000 people (moviegoers and and filmmakers and everything in between) and a slew of corporate sponsors — big names like HBO, Nickelodeon, NBC Universal and BET, among others, Friday is less enthusiastic when he talks about the direction he sees Hollywood heading, when it comes to black films and audiences.
“Not only has the trajectory not changed, we’re actually pointing downward,” he says.
But Friday stills sees hopeful signs.
The festival’s opening and closing films have attracted critical acclaim and studio interest. Beasts of the Southern Wild, which opens the festival, was a triple honoree at the Cannes Film Festival, winning the Grand Jury Prize for first-time director Benh Zeitlin, a cinematography award for its photographer, Ben Richardson, and the Caméra d’Or award for best first film. Beasts, which tells the story of a young girl whose life is beset by tragedy when a storm hits her small, Bayou town, has a distribution deal with Fox Searchlight.
The festival’s closing night feature: Raising Izzie, won the 2011 GMC Faith and Family screenplay competition, and features Soul Food stars Vanessa Williams and Rockmond Dunbar. The film’s producer, Roger M. Bobb, whose past projects include TV’s Meet the Browns, and the theatrical production of For Colored Girls, has twice won ABFF awards for best film. Raising Izzie was financed by the GMC Television Network.
But that’s not typical of the other films competing in the ABFF festival.
With the exception of the opening and closing night films, Friday says, “everything in between, the films in the competition, are all independent films – truly independent, in terms of financing, without distribution. And those are the filmmakers that are hoping that someone at the festival will come down and acquire the rights to the films.”
But Friday counsels aspiring filmmakers to not bank on theatrical release.
“I think the big opportunity for independent black films now is not in theaters,” Friday says. “It’s on television. Every time you hear about a new channel that launches — [for instance] Magic Johnson has a new channel called Aspire; and my company happens to have a show that’s premiering on that channel called “ABFF Independent” which is centered around just what we’re talking about: giving independent films a chance to make it to television. So I think that the new opportunity for independent black filmmakers is really television. Every time a channel goes up, every time a new digital platform is announced, it becomes another revenue stream or another distribution outlet. And technically, if HBO acquires your film, your film will be seen by more people than any theatrical release you’re going to have in normal cases.”
Friday believes that in the current environment, aspiring filmmakers have to reset their goals, and pivot away from the traditional movie theater.
“I think filmmakers have to recalibrate how they think about their film, [and ask,] is it realistic that a big studio’s going to pick my film up and it’s going to be on 3,000 screens? Probably not. But can I come to ABFF and get in front of all the major networks that support us, and get exposure and possibly get acquired by HBO or one of the other networks I mentioned? The answer is yes. So TV (and the internet) are really the next frontier for independent film. The theatrical thing I think might just continue to be a challenge.”
Another challenge Friday sees is expanding the scope of black film, to incorporate a fuller range of stories — the way things were in the 1990s. But Friday says one hurdle faced by today’s directors is the existence of fewer well-known directors and films to model.
“When you see what I call those monolithic type movies,” where studios say, “we’re going to give you only two types of movies; might give you more than one of them, but they’re only going to be in two genres, you know – the urban stuff, and we’ll give you the lowbrow comedy stuff, and you’re not getting anything else; we’re not giving you relationships. There won’t be any romance and heroes in these movies. Forget about it. So when that culture changes, what the filmmakers, the person who sits down at the computer to write that script, they don’t write what they don’t see” in their real lives, Friday says, “because they don’t think they have a shot (for it) to be successful.”
Instead, he says, “you started to see films just that [were] just a regurgitation of what they saw in Hollywood.”
“So what we’ve done, we’ve allowed the industry to get in our heads.”
But that doesn’t mean Friday isn’t an optimist.
“I think true artists have to stay on course,” he says. “Because art breaks through. Art breaks through all kind of biases; I truly believe that.”
Friday believes young filmmakers need more visible role models who are “breaking through.” He cites Tim Story, who directed Barbershop, Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer and other films before helming the 2012 hit, Think Like a Man, and who has been called “the highest-grossing black director that no one knows.” But he says most black directors aren’t working regularly enough to influence the next generation.
“The reason you don’t know the directors, because the volume of films is so scarce,” he says. “It’s kind of hard to know Malcolm Lee, a buddy of mine, if he only does a film every four years.”
The biggest issue, Friday says, is the shrinking studio system. “There are only like eight companies. And they really do set the course for everything that we digest theatrically. So I don’t think the culture of filmmaking has changed. I see a lot of great movies. And if you come [to the ABFF] this week, we’ve got a lot of very diverse stories – a lot of them. Will they ever make it to the, to a theater near you? Probably not. But I’m hoping that the television market will remain healthy and we’ll see our films. And at the very least, we’ll see our films in television, and then followed by, you know, successful digital, digital releases.”
And as for the role models who are out there, Friday says one, Tyler Perry, has gotten a bad rap.
“This whole Tyler Perry criticism really to me has been unfair,” Friday says. “Some of us sit around and criticize his work. The only problem is, it’s the only thing that we have to talk about. It has nothing to do with his work.”
“Between ’93 and ’99,” Friday says, “there was an average of about 12 to 16, I mean straight up black films – black director, producer … black writer – but more important, they were clearly targeted to a black audience. If Tyler Perry was just one of those twelve, we wouldn’t be talking about him. There’s so many people who don’t like his work. There are obviously more who do, ‘cause he wouldn’t be the highest-paid person in Hollywood last year [otherwise].”
For more on the American Black Film Festival, go to www.abff.com.
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