Editor

Free, Open Call for Racial Justice in View Submissions until August 10th!

The Buffalo International Film Festival is committed to diversity, inclusion, and community collaboration programmatically and organizationally. Our mission is to amplify diverse voices by creating and maintaining open platforms with which to tell stories through cinema. Recent events in our nation, as well as those occurring locally in the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and far too many others, have underscored the urgency of addressing racial injustice, and listening to the people that experience and witness these injustices first hand. We support and stand by the Black Lives Matter movement, and its efforts to educate, bring visibility, and spark discussions around the racism, systemic injustice and violence that has plagued this country since colonization. Through our festival platform, we hope to contribute to the work that BIPOC lead movements like BLM and many others are doing to transform these systems in order to fully enable equal rights, liberty and justice for all.

In light of these concerns, we’re announcing an open, submission-fee free call for RACIAL JUSTICE IN VIEW, a curated program of nonfiction film – documentary, experimental, video essays, and everything in between – exploring racism, protest, policing and inequality in the United States, Canada and sovereign Indigenous lands.  We invite makers from Western New York, the Tuscarora Nation/Ska:Ruh:Reh, the Tonawanda Seneca Nation/Onondowahgah, the Seneca Nation of Indians/Onondowahgah, the Cayuga Nation territories/Guyohkohnyoh, the Onondaga Nation/Onundagaono, the Oneida Nation/Onayotekaono, the Mohawk Nation/Kanienkahagen, Six Nations, the Shinnecock Nation, the Poospatuck Nation of the Unkechaugi, New York State, and Southern Ontario to submit video work under 10 minutes. We welcome old and new work for this category, but the work cannot be publicly accessible already.

Topics for further consideration include (but are not limited to): 
THE FIRE THIS TIME 
RACE AT THE BOILING POINT 
WITNESS NARRATIVES 
INTERSECTIONAL INJUSTICE 
COPS: THE GOOD, THE BAD + THE UGLY 
STRUCTURES OF INEQUALITY 
PROTEST + OTHER FORMS OF DISSENT 
RIGHTS + LAW IN POSTMODERN DEMOCRACY 
TACTICAL + STRATEGIC MEDIA 
ENGAGING THE POLITICAL PROCESS (FOR BETTER +/0R WORSE) 
RADICAL LOVE + REFORM 

Final deadline for the Racial Justice in View program is August 10th.

Free to submit for projects under 10 minutes from makers based in Western New York, New York State, Southern Ontario and neighboring Indigenous Nations.

To learn more and submit your project to Racial Justice in View please visit: https://filmfreeway.com/BIFFRacialJustice