- "AfroPop" is Black Public Media's series on public television that is an anthology of films from across the global Black diaspora, and it spotlights all kinds of stories that will take us around the world, from the U.S. to Jamaica to Ghana to Germany, highlighting stories that are lesser known, but familiar to the Black diasporic community.
They're stories of resilience and hope.
- [Speaker] Good bye.
(speaking Bantu language) - Hallelujah, thank you, Lord, thank you, thank you, thank you.
- [Denise] And strength.
- The first flood, 107 people came up out of this cemetery.
Daddy came up.
- Your daddy?
- "AfroPop" has really carved a tremendous path in terms of stories that are bringing contemporary African diaspora to our viewers.
"AfroPop" has been able to leverage our Black Public Media community of filmmakers in supporting their work for the last 16 seasons.
- Black Public Media is a 40 plus year old, nonprofit media arts organization, and our mission is to support innovative and interesting and smart stories about the Black experience and to support visionary content creators.
- On the call today, we have all the filmmakers, and we're all in different time zones, so this is truly the global Black experience.
(chuckles) - For this season in particular, the film that kicks off the season is "Commuted," directed by Nailah Jefferson.
- [Danielle] I kept telling myself that freedom is a state of mind.
- Everyone will be able to step inside Danielle's shoes and experience the emotions that she's experiencing as she's reintegrating into the free world.
- She participated in our Pitch Black event, which is a forum that funds filmmakers at a very early stage, and so we were very happy to be one of the early funders of that project, now see it in full circle.
- Our investment in these makers early in their career, mid-career, and as they're seasoned filmmakers ensures that we are bringing the stories about the Black experience and the global Black experience to the American public.
- We're gonna keep going, see, 'cause we're strong.
- I wanted to show people that we still had these vibrant communities in the face of these storms.
- They know we are strong, and you know, resistant people.
(objects and people thudding) (speaking foreign language) - This upcoming season, it's really taking a bold step in offering films that explore some of the same critical issues, but in very different ways, using narrative and Afrofuturistic themes.
- No one stays here forever.
- But how do we leave if we don't know what brought us here in the first place?
- [Denise] For Black storytellers, whether it's in books or visual arts and in film, that Afrofuturistic narrative space is a very powerful tool to create your own realities.
- It would be much easier if you don't question everything.
(speaking foreign language) - A lot of the historical injustices are never reckoned with in Kenya, we just forget and move on, so this film just gave me a perfect place to take some of these bigger thoughts and kind of crystallize them into personal stories.
- Afrofuturistic films allow you to reimagine and redefine yourself on your own terms.
(speaking foreign language) - There's no harm in a little pretending.
- I just wanted to do a realistic superhero film, and base it on the love I have for my family, that honors the relationship of my mother and my sister.
- The diaspora is here, the diaspora is in the U.S. We have to make sure that we are bringing in those stories that are not just steeped in the history from the African-Americans that are descendants of the African slaves from 400 plus years ago, but from the recent immigrants that are here, and those that came in the 20th century, and having a space where those stories can exist and be shared with the American public.
