NEW FOR 2021 - Racial Justice in View submissions may be submitted directly via our main festival page (FilmFreeway.com/buffalofilm).
The Buffalo International Film Festival is committed to diversity, inclusion, and community collaboration programmatically and organizationally. Our mission is to amplify diverse voices by creating and maintaining open platforms with which to tell stories through cinema. Recent events in our nation, as well as those occurring locally in the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and far too many others, have underscored the urgency of addressing racial injustice, and listening to the people that experience and witness these injustices first hand. We support and stand by the Black Lives Matter movement, and its efforts to educate, bring visibility, and spark discussions around the racism, systemic injustice and violence that has plagued this country since colonization. Through our festival platform, we hope to contribute to the work that BIPOC lead movements like BLM and many others are doing to transform these systems in order to fully enable equal rights, liberty and justice for all.
In light of these concerns, we’re launching an open, submission-fee free call for RACIAL JUSTICE IN VIEW, a curated program of nonfiction film - documentary, experimental, video essays, and everything in between – exploring racism, protest, police brutality and inequality in the United States, Canada and sovereign Indigenous lands. We invite makers from Western New York, the Tuscarora Nation/Ska:Ruh:Reh, the Tonawanda Seneca Nation/Onondowahgah, the Seneca Nation of Indians/Onondowahgah, the Cayuga Nation territories/Guyohkohnyoh, the Onondaga Nation/Onundagaono, the Oneida Nation/Onayotekaono, the Mohawk Nation/Kanienkahagen, Six Nations, the Shinnecock Nation, the Poospatuck Nation of the Unkechaugi, New York State, and Southern Ontario to submit video work under 10 minutes. We welcome old and new work for this category, but the work cannot be publicly accessible already.
Topics for further consideration include (but are not limited to):
THE FIRE THIS TIME
RACE AT THE BOILING POINT
WITNESS NARRATIVES
INTERSECTIONAL INJUSTICE
COPS: THE GOOD, THE BAD + THE UGLY
STRUCTURES OF INEQUALITY
PROTEST + OTHER FORMS OF DISSENT
RIGHTS + LAW IN POSTMODERN DEMOCRACY
TACTICAL + STRATEGIC MEDIA
ENGAGING THE POLITICAL PROCESS (FOR BETTER +/0R WORSE)
RADICAL LOVE + REFORM
_____________
Selected shorts will screen at the 2020 Buffalo International Film Festival's new Racial Justice In View program. BIFF runs October 8-12th in Buffalo, NY.
Films that do not meet these guidelines may be submitted for consideration (with applicable entry fee) at https://filmfreeway.com/buffalofilm
Contacts
