Black Alphabet Film Festival

The 12th Annual Black Alphabet Film Festival Chicago highlights groundbreaking features and powerful short films that challenge, uplift, and reflect, featuring Come Together: Art’s Power for Change from 2023 Emmy Award® nominee, director Nathan Hale Williams, who joins for a live Q&A session on Sunday at 4 PM.

Screenings will take place Oct. 25 & 26 from 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. at AMC Roosevelt ICON (1011 S Delano Ct.): https://www.blackalphabet.org/film-festival.

An opening reception will be held Friday, October 24 at 7 p.m. at the Jamii Center for Arts & Media (3850 S. Indiana Ave.).

In 2013, a group of Black LGBTQ+ friends in Chicago started a small film festival to showcase stories about people like us. What began as a conversation about the lack of Black queer films blossomed into Chicago’s first Black LGBTQ+ film festival. That festival grew into an international movement using arts, media, and wellness to uplift Black LGBTQ+ lives, which was recognized in 2023 by the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame.

Features:
Come Together: Art’s Power for Change, directed by Nathan Hale Williams – Amidst escalating anti-LGBTQ legislation and attacks on women’s rights, this film underscores the imperative of collective action for liberation (Sunday, Oct. 26, 4 PM).

Plenum, directed by founding member of Black Alphabet Charlene A. Carruthers – In 1995, two siblings face the AIDS crisis during a historic Black political conference as they navigate family estrangement, encounter queer and trans ancestors, and envision futures for the African Diaspora.