For several years, the Blackhouse has been one of the hottest spots on Park City’s Main Street during the Sundance Film Festival. This year, the physical festival might have been canceled, but that didn’t stop the Blackhouse from packing the (virtual) house, showcasing top black talent within the entertainment industry at their virtual lounge. The best part? In the past, there were limits on how many people could squeeze into the long, but this year almost every event can be viewed from literally anywhere, providing a lasting legacy of the creativity behind many of this year’s top movies, films, and entertainment.
Kicking off the public-facing events, Blackhouse teamed up with Facebook for a Shorts Directors Roundtable group conversation. Several of the directors behind some of Sundance’s top Black short films took the time to share the stories, motivation, and inspiration behind their films and the work that it took to make it to the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.
The New Frontier: The Future is in Color event showed how leading Black creators are using AR/VR/AI platforms and technologies to create immersive storytelling experiences, using the technology to “harness the power of radical imagination” Idris Brewster, the Chief Creative Officer for Movers and Shakers NYC, shared how he was using tech for his science fiction experience Quantum Summer, an audiovisual meditation off the future of blackness, technology, and ancestral intelligence.
The STARZ stars came out (or at least online) with Travis Payne’s group interview with the choreographer and actresses from the STARZ hit “P-Valley.” The group interview described how the entire team came together to create a show that was not just entertaining, but also authentic, truly capturing the artistic aesthetic of Mississippi and the Deep South. The full interview can be viewed here.
Janaya Future Khan, the founder of Black Lives Matter in Toronto, interviewed the cast and crew of HULU’s hit, “The United States vs Billie Holiday,” which tells the Untold Story of the iconic Jazz Singer’s Civil Rights activism. The full interview can be viewed here.
Best of all, the Blackhouse did their best to make sure that viewers had a proper brunch on Sunday morning as top Black chef Lazarus Lynch showed viewers how to cook a great brunch of shrimp and grits in the comfort of their own home as part of the SEEN Black Filmmakers program.
Additionally, the Blackhouse hosted dozens of other events, panels, and interviews, all of which can be found on their Facebook Watch.
The Blackhouse Foundation stands out as a bastion for the most influential and impactful Black writers, directors, producers, crew, actors, and actresses throughout film, television, digital media, and beyond.
