Spelman College has become a gathering place this summer for curated cinema that speaks directly to Black experience, imagination and joy.
The BLFF Encore Series — a partnership between Spelman College and the BronzeLens Film Festival — launched its second installment with a program centered on family, following an opening night dedicated to Afrofuturism. Through Aug. 6, the series continues weekly each Thursday night, with each program built around a distinct thematic focus.
Kathleen Bertrand, who founded BronzeLens and directs the festival, is a Spelman graduate. "It's always a delight to come to this campus for any reason," she said. The partnership represents a continuation of what Black arts institutions do best: they curate and hold space for voices that mainstream distribution channels routinely overlook.
Deidre McDonald, the festival's founding artistic director, selected all four films for the series. McDonald's curatorial approach reveals how Black cultural memory works. She didn't start with themes or demographics; she started with films that had stayed with her.
"Over the course of years, there are certain films that kind of stuck in my head," McDonald said. "They left a big impression on me, and so it was wonderful to be able to go back and pick those out, and in a way, the themes just came naturally."
The family-themed evening included "Glitter Ain't Gold," written and directed by Christian Nolan Jones and featuring actor Priah Ferguson, and "The Jordan Film," a speculative work imagining a father and daughter who take in a siren after Atlanta's water becomes polluted.
One selection followed a group of friends encountering an alien spacecraft while addressing whether those who leave their neighborhoods eventually return to share what they've learned. Another film dealt with migration, aspiration, diaspora and belonging — themes that live beneath the surface of Black life.
The evening's final film, "Electric Pioneers," is a documentary by Atlanta filmmaker Patrick Phillips that captures the city's personal electric vehicle community — e-skateboards, electric unicycles and the culture surrounding them. In Phillips' hands, a niche subject becomes a document of freedom, community and the ways marginalized groups create culture around available tools.
Phillips comes from a background in social work and continued his education through a film program at what was then Clayton State University. He emphasized that the work felt organic because he wasn't approaching it as an outsider.
"It just came out so naturally because I had the benefit of being a part of this community and being able to share a story about a community that is often overlooked, misunderstood," he explained.
Phillips resisted relying on what he called "sexy, sexy visuals" — surface-level aesthetics that grab attention but leave audiences hollow. Instead, he pursued character, relationship and story architecture.
"After a while, people want a cohesive story," he said. As he filmed, larger themes emerged — transportation equity, mental health, community bonds — rather than being imposed from above.
Barbara Chirinos, the inaugural artistic director for both the Latanya Richardson Jackson Samuel L. Jackson Performing Arts Center and the Mary Schmidt Campbell Center for Innovation in the Arts at Spelman, addressed Phillips after the screening: "It really felt as if we were riding with you."
Before the evening ended, Phillips made a direct appeal to the audience: help get "Electric Pioneers" screened along the Atlanta BeltLine, the corridor central to the riding community the film documents. It's the kind of ask that transforms a screening from passive consumption into active cultural work.
The BLFF Encore Series continues at 7 p.m. each Thursday through Aug. 6 at Spelman's Mary Schmidt Campbell Center for Innovation and the Arts. Tickets are available through the Spelman College Marketplace.
