History of the Hollywood Black Film Festival

Los Angeles-Just last week, Los Angeles was able to experience the 7^th Annual Hollywood Black Film Festival.  Filled with informational seminars, panels, short, feature, and student films, workshops, and a job fair, this year’s festival appealed to many. 

This "6-day celebration of black cinema draws together established filmmakers, popular film and TV stars, writers, directors, industry executives, emerging artists and new audiences from Southern California and around the world."

HBFF was founded in 1998 by Tanya Kersey to help launch independent films and filmmakers.

The festival has featured John Singleton's " 2 Fast 2 Furious," "The Hurricane," director Kasi Lemmons' "The Caveman's Valentine," and director Reggie Rock Bythewood's "Dancing in September."

The Merger of UPN and WB

Recently, conversation among much of the African American community have been about the merger of the UPN with the WB, to create CW.  The festival held a panel last Saturday about the merger.  Panelists Brett King, former SVP of Current Programming, Chauncey B. Washington, Writer for Half & Half, and Gary A. Watson, ESQ, provided much insight on the merger. 

Both networks, UPN and WB, with a history of providing opportunities for minority writers and actors, have not turned much of a profit since inception. Each network has made African American programming a priority.  Apparently, however, audiences beyond the minority community have not shown up.

There are a few ideas or theories in TV land as to why the shortage of an audience has taunted these networks.  Some think that nonminority audiences do not find an interest in programming that outlines the African American experience.  Others feel that there is a self-fulfilling prophecy at work.  The networks, particularly UPN, target their advertising towards African Americans.  Therefore only African Americans tune in to the programming.  Because there is a smaller number of African Americans in the U.S., a smaller audience, and therefore smaller profit, is inevitable.

The combination of 23 hours of programming, from both UPN and WB, will be reduced to 13 hours with the merger.

A question from the panel, and a question being asked amongst many African American families is “What is the future of black programming?”  This is purely speculation but some from the panel feel that programming is likely to focus on multiethnic diversity in programming.  This plan for a diverse racial makeup is seen in the ever successful, “Grey’s Anatomy,” but will new shows or tweaking existing shows on CW be as lucky?  I guess we’ll all tune in and see.

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