Photo by Noah Washington/The Atlanta Voice Spelman College’s Mary Schmidt Campbell Center for Innovation and the Arts hosted the second installment of the BLFF Encore Series on Thursday, continuing a new partnership between the college and the BronzeLens Film Festival that curators say grew ou t of years of collaboration on campus. The series features weekly Thursday screenings through Aug. 6, each built around a distinct theme. Thursday’s program centered on family, following a July 16 Afrofuturism-themed opening night. Kathleen Bertrand, BronzeLens’ director and founder, said the partnership traces back to her own ties to the college. “I’m a Spelman graduate, so it’s always a delight to come to this campus for any reason,” Bertrand said, adding that BronzeLens had already held several events at the college before the Encore series took shape. She credited founding artistic director Deidre McDonald with anchoring the series’ film selections. “For all the years of Bronze Lens, there was a key person who was our artistic director,” Bertrand said. “All films are excellent because they got that teacher, and she had that eye.” McDonald, who curated all four screenings in the series, said the selections drew from films that stayed with her over the years. “Over the course of years, there are certain films that kind of stuck in my head,” McDonald said. “They left a big impression on me, and so it was wonderful to be able to go back and pick those out, and in a way, the themes just came naturally.” The evening opened with “Glitter Ain’t Gold,” written and directed by Christian Nolan Jones and starring Priah Ferguson. It was followed by “The Jordan Film,” the story of a siren taken in by a father and daughter in Atlanta after the city’s water becomes polluted, a plot arriving with an unplanned echo of Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey.” A third film followed a group of friends who encountered an alien spaceship and evidence of life beyond Earth. Its central conflict turned on a familiar question in Black communities: whether those who leave their neighborhoods return home to share what they’ve gained. Barbara Chirinos (left) in conversation with director Patrick Phillips. Photo by Noah Washington/The Atlanta Voice The night closed with “Electric Pioneers,” a documentary by Atlanta filmmaker Patrick Phillips exploring the city’s personal electric vehicle community, including e-skateboards and electric unicycles, and the sense of freedom the culture offers riders. Phillips said the film marked his first time working on a documentary, despite a background in social work and a continuing education film program at what was then Clayton State. “It just came out so naturally because I had the benefit of being a part of this community and being able to share a story about a community that is often overlooked, misunderstood,” he said. He described documentary filmmaking as closer to qualitative research than a highlight reel. “A lot of times, people think having these sexy, sexy visuals is what it’s all about, and that might be cool for the first five minutes of the film, but after a while, people want a cohesive story,” Phillips said. Themes of transportation equity, community, and mental health emerged as he shot, he said, rather than being planned from the outset. Barbara Chirinos, inaugural artistic director for the Latanya Richardson Jackson Samuel L. Jackson Performing Arts Center and the Mary Schmidt Campbell Center for Innovation in the Arts at Spelman College, praised the documentary’s intimacy. “It really felt as if we were riding with you,” Chirinos told Phillips. Phillips closed the conversation with a charge to the audience: to help get “Electric Pioneers” screened along the Atlanta Beltline, a corridor central to the riding community the film documents. The BLFF Encore Series continues at 7 p.m. Thursdays through Aug. 6 at Spelman’s Mary Schmidt Campbell Center for Innovation and the Arts. Tickets are available through the Spelman College Marketplace. The post Spelman, BronzeLens Partnership Brings Encore Screenings to Family Night appeared first on The Atlanta Voice. ...read more read less