Toronto Black Film Festival to feature #MeToo’s Tarana Burke and women’s stories

TORONTO — For the first time in its seven-year history, the poster for the Toronto Black Film Festival features a woman.

But you can’t see her face. Instead, her back is to the camera and only her head and bare shoulders are visible.

“That’s symbolic of how black women are invisible when they face problems of trauma and everything else,” said Fabienne Colas, the festival’s founder and president.

“That’s a marginalized group still today.”

Colas said women are “front and centre” of this year’s festival, which runs Feb. 13-18, during Black History Month.

The lineup unveiled Wednesday has a variety of female-focused stories, including Daryne Joshua’s “Ellen: The Ellen Pakkies Story,” which will open the festival with a look at a mother’s troubled relationship with her drug-addled son in South Africa.

Closing the festival is “Dead Women Walking” by Hagar Ben-Asher, about a group of female inmates on death row.

Guests include Tarana Burke, a women’s rights advocate and founder of the #MeToo movement against rape and sexual harassment, who will speak at a Q-and-A and receive the festival’s first-ever Social Impact Award.

Colas, who will moderate the Q-and-A on Feb. 16, said she wants to talk about how #MeToo is empowering certain segments of the population and not others.

“Why is it that black women are not believed as much as their white counterparts? Why is it that black women are fearful of coming out and saying what happened to them?” said Colas, who also founded the Montreal International Black Film Festival and the Festival Haiti en Folie in Montreal and New York City.

“In the multicultural communities, you will see that there are not a lot of people coming out that are visible minorities, because it’s very taboo in our communities. It’s something that you don’t talk about.”

A total of 70 films from 26 countries are in the lineup for the festival, which runs in several venues around the city and has a section for children and a food station featuring cuisine from across Africa and the Caribbean.

The festival comes at “amazing” time for onscreen diversity, said Colas.

She pointed to the smash success of “Black Panther,” which became the first superhero film to earn an Oscar nomination for best picture on Tuesday. Its seven Oscar nominations also included one for production designer Hannah Beachler, who became the first African-American nominee in that category.

Then there’s “BlacKkKlansman,” which got six Oscar nods, including best picture and best directing for Spike Lee — his first such nomination.

And “If Beale Street Could Talk” is up for three Oscars, including best screenplay for Barry Jenkins.

“Can you believe a few years ago we were not there — we were not there! — and that’s why we had #OscarsSoWhite,” Colas said, referring to a movement started by activist April Reign in 2015.

“We’re happy because a few years ago, we were complaining and we started this movement all together and look at what it did.”

But there’s more work to be done, Colas added, stressing a need for more visible minorities in positions behind the camera as well, like producing and directing.

Colas said she’d like to see “every level of government” take action faster to foster diversity and reach a point where cinema reflects society’s demographic reality.

“We need to constantly be watching out, be constantly making sure that things are going in the right way, because nothing should be taken for granted,” Colas said.

“However, I believe since ‘Black Panther’ especially, the perception of what a black film is has changed worldwide.'”

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Victoria Ahearn, The Canadian Press