Four films about racial inequality and the connection between the civil rights movement of the 1960s and contemporary events will be featured in this year’s Black Film Festival, a presentation of the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill and the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center. Set for Friday and Aug. 21, the screenings will take place on the museum’s terrace and, weather permitting, its events lawn.
Friday’s program will kick off with Gordon Quinn’s “ ’63 Boycott,” a 31-minute documentary about that year’s boycott of the Chicago public schools by more than 250,000 students to protest racial segregation. The film blends 16-millimeter footage of the march shot by Mr. Quinn with the participants’ reflections today.
“ ’63 Boycott” will be paired with “I Am Not Your Negro,” Raoul Peck’s Oscar-nominated documentary based on James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript “Remember This House,” a memoir of his recollections of civil rights leaders, including Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, the film also includes Baldwin’s personal observations on American history.
Part two of the festival will feature “The Hate U Give,” a drama directed by George Tillman Jr. and starring Amandla Stenberg as a Black girl caught between the poor, mostly Black neighborhood where she lives and the upscale, mostly white prep school she attends. After the fatal shooting of a childhood friend by a police officer, she faces pressures from all sides of her community.
It will be preceded by “Other,” a short film by Xavier Burgin about a Black woman who struggles with her feelings as she moves through white spaces after the white nationalist rallies in Charlottesville, Va.
Both programs will start at 8 p.m. Tickets are $20, $10 for members and friends of the recreational center, free for students and children, and must be bought in advance on the museum’s website. Audiences have been advised to take chairs or blankets, as the museum will not provide seating.
