2021
Feburary, 2021, I am celebrating a big personal milestone. My short film entitled Running for My Life was accepted to the one of the world’s largest and most prestigeous film festivals (which is also a Black film festival), the Pan African Film Festival (PAFF). I felt it was necessary to write this essay to explain the importance why it’s the acceptance is so important to me, and the overall importance of this film festival.
Road to PAFF
In November 2019, my mother, Rachel, planned to run her last competitive long distance race. She was then 70 years old, and has been a long distance runner for the past 30 years, and this was it. She wanted this to be her last race, and she wanted to do it at the Monterey Bay Half Marathon. From the outside, it seems like an arbitrary place, but to my mother it’s special because of the sheer beauty of Monterey, and there are also some logistical reasons as well. She prefers races that start and end at the same place, she likes to walk to the starting line, and the course is pretty flat. Knowing that, she planned and trained as she usually did, but there was also the mental preparation of this being her last race. She was ready to call it quits. Because this was the swan song of my mother’s racing career, I wanted to document the experienece.
We drove up to Monterey from Los Angeles, where we planned to stay for a few days, have my mom run the race, and we would drive back home. This sounds simple enough, but there was a problem. The Bay Area was experiencing historically terrible fires that was affecting the air quality in Northern California, so much so that events were being cancelled. We didn’t think that Monterey would be affected, but we were wrong. On the night before my mother’s final race, they’re was a notification saying they had cancelled the race. My mom was devistated. She had two options: either this could be it, or she could come back again next year, so she chose the latter. She said that the family didn’t have to come with her for a second time, but if she was coming back, I was coming back.
…and the next year, we were back.
2019 was the year in which my mom ran the Monterey Bay Half Marathon, and I was there to document it. My base level plan was to make a video for her, our family, and our closest circle. Regardless of what happened as a result of the documentation, the fact that I documented it was a win, and everything else was just extra.
The Importance of PAFF
My mom has been a supporter of PAFF for many years. It is a film festival that has a unique combination of heritage and prestige, and it is also in our own backyard. The films are hosted at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, the oldest mall in Los Angeles, and it is a ten minute drive from our house. Every February for the last decade, my mother would frequent the theater, sometimes multiple times a week, to see the films that interests her, and I would join. As someone who has been more of a videographer and less of a filmmaker, initially I never really strived to be a part of PAFF, but there was this project that I’ve been working on for the eight years that has yet to be completed, and that was always in the back of my mind. Over the last few years, I had more of a desire to be in the film festival, and even if my longstanding project wasn’t finished, I felt that my current project that I was able to finish did meet the criteria. At that point, It became a dream of mine for my mom to see the film made about her at the film festival she fully supports.
PAFF is For Us, By Us
I applied to other film festivals. To be honest, PAFF was not my first film festival acceptance. I was accepted into another film festival that I do not want to mention, because I do not want to shine a light on it. During the process of applying to film festivals, I began to find that many film festivals, especially some of the lesser established festivals, are transactional. You pay the entrance fee that turns out to be an automatic acceptance, and your gift is a laurel that you can put on your flyer and promote this cycle of empty patronage to others. There’s another film festival that I did not get into, that, upon further review, did not have a single Black judge on their panel. How can a film festival understand Black perspectives without a Black judge? Well, based on the historical neglect and under appreciation of Black film through mainstream cinematic history, this is hardly a rare occurance. In fact, it is likely the norm. These two specific experiences demonstrates why the PAFF is so important.
The Pan African Film Festival is important, not only because it is Black, but because it is us. ALL of us, from all over the world. It is the reflection that is the diversity of us. It sees the importance of Black filmmakers and Black film, telling Black stories from the harsh and painful realities of our history to the ordinary, subtle complexities of everyday life. We are all of those things, and we can see many points of the spectrum represented in their selections. With everything that has been said, it makes me especially proud that this film about my mom is being included in the festival.
Thank you, Pan African Film Festival, for 29 years of excellence service.
