Greater Cleveland Urban Film Festival opens today, runs through September 18

Nate’s Northcoast Notes

Annual Chalk Festival also set for this weekend

By Nate Paige

2020 Greater Cleveland Urban Film Festival (September 10-18)

Dreamhood examines life in the international village neighborhood of Cleveland.
Directed by Cigdem Slankard, it's one of dozens of feature films, documentaries and
shorts in this year's virtual GCUFF event.

The Ninth Annual Greater Cleveland Urban Film Festival (GCUFF) is going virtual this year, kicking off Thursday, September 10 and running through Friday, September 18.  The opening night film is “The Best of Enemies,” a period piece starring Taraji P. Henson and Sam Rockwell depicting the real-life story of civil rights activist Ann Atwater.  This year’s festival will showcase more than 80 films online. “We’re delighted that we can continue to share films from all over the world,” said GCUFF Executive Director Donna Dabbs.  “There’s also several free community events featuring films and projects from our youth and students!”

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most of this year’s film lineup will be screened online, but on Friday, September 11 and Saturday, September 12, GCUFF goes retro with double-feature screenings of old- and new-school classics, including “Five on the Black Hand Side,” and the “Shaft” reboot  at Mayfield Road Drive-In Theater, 12100 State Rte. 322, Chardon.  See the Program Guide and purchase passes at www.gcuff.org.

Cleveland Restoration Society Community Luncheon Connection (September 11)

On Friday, September 11 the Cleveland Restoration Society will host a virtual version of its annual Community Luncheon Connection. This year’s keynote speaker is John G. Morikis, Chairman and CEO of Sherwin-Williams. In 2019, Forbes Magazine named Morikis as one of the nation’s most innovative leaders. Networking begins at 11:30 am; program at noon.  Single tickets are $75. To register, click here.  For more information, contact Stephanie Phelps at sphelps@clevelandrestoration.org.

Cleveland Museum of Art Virtual Chalk Festival (September 12, 13)

As Nature always finds a way, creativity will also manage to shine through, despite the circumstances.  The annual CMA Chalk Festival, September 12 and 13, is adapting to the new way of doing things by going virtual. This year’s theme is Community, and participants are encouraged to share their chalk drawings on Facebook and Instagram using the hashtag #CMAChalkFestival.  For details, and possibly inspiration from the Museum’s expansive collection, click here.

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ARREST THAT PROCRASTINATING BLACK MAN FOR HIS OWN GOOD!

The man who destroyed Jim Crow had to know the Constitution better than the Supreme Court had allowed it to be known and trust its precepts more than the framers had themselves. [See below]

Both conventional wisdom and available evidence would seem to agree that men are reluctant to visit the doctor unless absolutely necessary, and that this is especially true of black men. Reasons for this proclivity to act against self-interest vary of course, but the bottom line is that men procrastinate about taking care of their health.

So here’s a prescription: Call your father, brother, adult son, uncle, nephew, cousin, neighbor, co-worker, friend, or significant male other and tell him to go TODAY, THIS EVENING, BETWEEN 5:30 and 8:30 PM over to the Cleveland Clinic Main Campus, Glickman Tower, on Euclid Avenue at East 96 St, for the 10^th Annual Cleveland Clinic Minority Men’s Health Fair.

There he can choose among an abundance of FREE HEALTH SCREENINGS for a variety of concerns either he has or that you may have for him, including:

Blood Pressure

Body Mass Index (BMI)

Bone Density

Cholesterol

Diabetes (blood sugar)

Dental screening

Glaucoma (eye)

Heart Disease

Hepatitis C

HIV

Lung Health

Kidney Function

Oral Cancer

Prostate Cancer

Sickle Cell

Skin Cancer

Stress/Depression

Wellness

Parking is FREE and he is sure to run into some of his good buddies. Tell him that if he goes early he can get home in time to see the Browns make their first selection, or he can hang around the Fair and join in the collective cheer or groan when the pick is announced/traded bungled.

This is Minority Health Month and a Minority Men’s Health Fair, but it is open to ALL MEN.

He can register in person at the Fair or Pre-register by visiting www.clevelandclinic.org/mmhc  

For more information, visit www.clevelandclinic.org/mmhc 

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GCUFF REDUX

Procrastinators of a different stripe who missed last week’s successful debut of the Greater Cleveland Urban Film Fest can get a taste of what they missed TONIGHT ONLY at an encore presentation of two of the more talked about films: The Contradictions of Fair Hope and Happy Sad. Both films will be shown at Shaker Square Cinema, at 6PM and 8PM respectively.

“Contradictions” is a documentary treatment of a little known aspect of American history, when newly freed slaves throughout the South formed “benevolent societies” to respond to the abject hunger, illness and the fear of a pauper’s grave. The documentary sets the stage in rural Alabama, prior to Emancipation, and traces the development, struggles, contributions and gradual loss of tradition of one of the last remaining African American benevolent societies, known as “The Fair Hope Benevolent Society” in Uniontown, Alabama. The film is narrated by Whoopi Goldberg and co-directed by S. Epatha Merkerson of Law and Order fame.

“Happy Sad” is a tender and vibrant coming of age story. Mandy, a high school footballer from the ghettos of Trinidad is shipped off to the idyllic island of Tobago to live with her great uncle Cephas (Bill Cobbs). Fury and fear keep Mandy from seeing the beauty all around her. Soon the island itself becomes a character that helps Mandy overcome her inner demons. 2009. Directed by Dianah Wynter.

Tickets may be purchased at the box office. GCUFF passes are no longer valid.

The Festival’s three-minute promo can be seen here. It was shown before every film during the Festival and was especially well done. Check it out.

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AN AMAZING STORY

There would have been no Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King Jr. without an extraordinarily important cadre of people who planned, strategized, and acted with conviction and courage for years and even decades to prepare the way for the headliners to be written into history of civil rights heroes.

Similarly, there would have been no Thurgood Marshall, A. Leon Higginbotham, or Barack Obama had it not been for a brilliant, visionary attorney named Charles Hamilton Houston, architect of Howard Law School, and the strategic legal campaign that reached its dramatic zenith in Brown vs. Board of Education.

Tonight, Rev. Zachery R. Williams, Ph.D., will lead an informed discussion about this historic episode in civil rights and American history, based on the book, Root and Branch: Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall and the Struggle to End Segregation.

Tonight’s discussion is part of an ongoing dialogue on the Civil Rights Movement that focuses on the organizing and other skills of a quartet of leaders, including A. Phillip Randolph and Ella Baker, in addition to Houston and Marshall.

The series is presented by The National Institute for Restorative Justice at Deuteronomy 8:3 Café and Books, 1464 Wade Park Ave, in University Circle.

Tonight’s discussion leader, Zachery Williams, is an assistant history professor at the University of Akron, assistant pastor at Olivet Institutional Baptist Church,  and the author of a fine book, In Search of The Talented Tenth: Howard University Public Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Race, about which I wrote briefly here.

  

 

The examination of Houston’s legacy will continue next week when US District Judge Solomon Oliver, chief judge of the Northern District, leads part two of the study of “the man who killed Jim Crow.”

Find further details at www.restorativejusticeinstitute.org.

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"By now they understood that they were to become social engineers —

to use the law to change the law... Learning the law and learning to think 

like a lawyer were but the elementary steps in becoming social engineers...

The third step... was the most critical: In order to give meaning to steps one and two — if they were to be anything but 'parasites' on their society — African American lawyers were obligated to know what the law should be.

They had to know the Constitution better than the Supreme Court had allowed it to be known and trust its precepts more than the framers had themselves ...

For all his Ivy League education and conservative mien, Dean Houston's

teaching law in this manner was as audacious as the arguments he and his

former students would soon begin presenting to courts across the country."

Rawn James, Jr. 

Black Culture is Alive and Well in Cleveland

Black Culture is Alive and Well in Cleveland

The concept of black culture can be an elusive one. Exactly what is it?

For some people, it is dismissed by reference to song and dance, or young black males with sagging pants, oversized shirts and hoodies. This portrait is used to justify black underachievement, unemployment, crime statistics, incarceration, and just about any societal pathology commonly projected as black-related through the daily newspaper, or nightly news, or right-wing cable shows.

But of course, these images are far from encapsulating the African American community, or even the dominant portion of it. Cleveland this week is phenomenally alive with expressions of what black culture is about. Consider what’s happening around town just this evening:

Starting at 5PM, Successnet and 100 Black Men are presenting a program at Cleveland State University’s Drinko Hall on “Who’s Mentoring Black Children?” The program will honor four active Clevelanders as 2012 Mentors: Ted Ginn, Kwa David Whitaker, Yvonne Pointer, Ilinda Reese.

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A quick ride away on the Healthline, at Case Western Reserve University, Karamu Theater will be presenting a play April 19 about foster care experience in Strosacker Auditorium. The free, public performance of Michael Oatman’s “Sometimes Hope is Enough” will be followed by a discussion about foster care. The event is a collaboration among Karamu,  Case’s Schubert Center for Child Studies, and the Cuyahoga County Division of Children and Family Services.

The program aims to bring to light the situations of the more than 2,000 foster children in Cuyahoga County without permanent homes. Each year, roughly 200 youth turn 18 and “age out” of the foster care system, many with few connections or resources to begin living on their own.

The panelists — Gregory Ashe, executive director, Karamu House; David Crampton, associate professor, CWRU Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences; Jessica Horne, executive director, Cleveland Urban Minority Alcoholism Drug Abuse Outreach Project (UMADOP); Gregory Kapcar, legislative director, Public Children Services Association of Ohio (PCSAO); Jacqueline McCray, deputy director, Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services, Resources and Placement; and Melinda Sykes, director of children’s initiatives, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine — will discuss the research and policy implications of the realities portrayed in the play.

For information, visit Schubert.case.edu/SometimesHopeIsEnough2012.aspx or call Kate Lodge at the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services at 216.881.4343 or Gabriella Celeste at the Schubert Center at 216.368.5314.

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Also on Case’s campus this afternoon will be Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, courtesy of the Case’s active Social Justice Institute, which is led by Professor Rhonda Williams. Coleman, a M.I.T.-trained social scientist and Ph.D., is the author of No Fear: A Whistleblower’s Triumph Over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA.

The program, which will include a book signing, starts at 6:15 PM in the University’s Biomedical Research Building [Biomedical Research Building • BRB 105 • http://www.case.edu/maps/]

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Meanwhile, starting at 6PM in at North Broadway Methodist Church in Slavic Village, the second of a of the 4 part series of 2012 Voter Education Forums will be offering important information on voter education. A panel of prominent Greater Clevelanders, including Dennis Anderson of the Cuyahoga Board of Elections, Shakyra Diaz of the Cleveland chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, Hiram College political science professor Jason Johnson, and Will Tarter III, president of the Cleveland Young Professional Senate, will address important issues as voter disenfranchisement, how to be a more informed voter, and the voting rights of formerly incarcerated persons.

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On the entertainment tip, non-procrastinators will be attending yet another campus event, as part of the 2012 Tri-C Jazz Fest, where Esperanza Spalding will be performing before a sold-out crowd at Metro Auditorium.

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But lovers of culture need not go starving tonight. They merely have to head to Shaker Square, for the opening night of Cleveland’s first-ever Greater Cleveland Urban Film Festival. Tonight’s schedule will feature “The Contradictions of Fair Hope” starting at 7:15PM, followed by a post-film reception next door at Zanzibar Restaurant. More details on the Festival, which runs through Sunday, can be found here: http://www.gcuff.org/

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Either the film or the reception is likely to attract early attendees from the Cleveland Realtists Association’s monthly business networking event, which takes place down the street and around the corner at Jezebel’s Café on Larchmere Blvd.

Consider this is just one day in the life of Cleveland’s African Community. There is positive activity everywhere for those who care to look. We will do a better job going forward in bringing timely information concerning these kinds of activities. 

Tomorrow we will tell you about this weekend’s events, including Friday’s wine-tasting hosted by The President’s Council, a session of African American philanthropy offered by The Cleveland Foundation Saturday, the annual luncheon of the Top Ladies of Distinction, and an all day Saturday student leadership conference at Case Western Reserve.

Nonprofit Thursday Returns!

Today is a promising day in Cleveland’s nonprofit world. Regular readers in this space are familiar with how underperforming we find so many of the nonprofits whose principal mission is to serve the African American community. But even the local NAACP has at least bestirred itself to address one of the burning issues of the day — the election of the next Cuyahoga County prosecutor. They are sponsoring a debate among the five candidates next Tuesday, February 7 from 7-8:30PM at St. James A.M.E. Church, 8401 Cedar Ave.

The Society of Urban Professionals has for the last several years been one of the brightest lights on our local nonprofit scene. S.O.U.P. knows how to put on a party and how to have fun, but they also put together some top-notch lunches with speakers who address topics of special interests to African American professionals. Now the group is expanding its horizons with the establishment of the Greater Cleveland Urban Film Festival, set to debut April 19-22 at the Shaker Square Cinema.

The festival will showcase local emerging talent as well as established artists in the world of independent filmmaking. GCUFF’s programming objective is to educate, entertain and highlight the African American experience via films and documentaries that represent the African American journey. They also hope to encourage area students to consider a career in the film industry.

GCUFF’s artistic director is Neal Hodges, a fixture on Cleveland’s arts scene via his work with Karamu and other organizations. Hodges told The Real Deal that Cleveland has given birth to or nurtured much outstanding talent in the movie industry, including Hallie Berry, Terrence Howard, Bill Cobbs, and Kym Whitley. He thinks their success and connections can help foster both GCUFF’s success as well as the development of new local talent.

The Festival is reaching out to film programs in the region’s institutions of higher learning in a call for films for this year’s inaugural event. Festival principals also hope to land one or two nationally known actors for the premiere.

In a prepared statement, co-founder and executive director Donna Dabbs said the Festival has been established itself as a as a nonprofit 501(c) (3) organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of African American and African Diaspora cinema as well as the education of media arts, said Donna Dabbs of SOUP. The organization's board will consist of community minded citizens and business leaders dedicated to the promotion and marketing of the Greater Cleveland Urban Film Festival.

Alton Tinker, co-founder of both S.O.U.P. and the Festival, said in the Festival press release that "We are continuing to build our brand and promote our image in Cleveland and the film festival is one more way that SOUP can contribute to building and connecting our urban professionals in Greater Cleveland". Tinker serves as the director of funding and sponsorship for GCUFF.

For more information, contact Neal Hodges at 216-214-6383, email
Info@gcuff.net, or visit the Festival website at www.gcuff.net.

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The local chapter of the National Black MBA Association also has some positive initiatives going. On Tuesday, Feb. 7, it will host a webinar on "Sustainable Business 101: Re-Thinking How We Conduct Business in Tomorrow's Economy". Local attorney David E Nash, partner at McMahon DeGullis, an environmental law firm, will present.

To register, visit http://anymeeting.com; for more information contact program and events co-chairs Starlyn Priest or Tammy Monroe at programs.clevelandblackmbas@hotmail.com.

The chapter also is sponsoring an academic leadership and enrichment   program, Leaders of Tomorrow, to serve area high school students who demonstrate leadership potential. The program offers a special curriculum that focuses on mentoring, cultural exposure, experiential learning, and college preparation.

For more information contact Catrina Palmer at catrinapalmer1@gmail.com.

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One of the strongest and most positive area nonprofits in the black community is the Consortium of African American Organizations [CAAO].

CAAO is now looking for new leadership following the retirement of the one-of-a-kind Connie Atkins.  Resumes are currently being accepted until February 25 for a new Executive Director of the Consortium. Go to the website to see the job description - www.caao.net.

If you are passionate about CAAO's mission, energetic, and an excellent communicator (and able to raise money), this may be for you.

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Black History Month at the Maltz Museum

In recognition of Black History Month, the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage has announced two special programs related to the Black Experience in America.

On Wednesday, February 8, Cleveland Public Theatre director Beth Wood and members of the cast of Antebellum will talk about and perform selected scenes from this provocative drama that unfolds against the backdrop of a southern plantation, a German concentration camp and the 1939 Atlanta premiere of Gone with the Wind; a play that resonates with the entwining realities of Nazi cruelty and Hollywood dreams. Program beings at 7pm; advance tickets available $10 ($8 Museum members) - call 216.593.0575 to purchase.

The Museum will be open on Presidents Day (Monday, February 20) 11am - 5pm. At 1pm there is a special program, free with Museum admission, featuring portrayals of Abraham Lincoln and four other U.S. Presidents of the past. The performers will tell the audience about their life and times, and be available for questions after the presentation. No reservations required.

Maltz Museum Executive Director Judi Feniger notes, "The core of our work at the Museum is outreach to people from all backgrounds, races, religions and cultures. As The Museum of Diversity and Tolerance, we're always looking for ways to share experiences and foster community collaboration and conversation." The Museum's most recent special exhibition was Hardship to Hope: African American Art from the Karamu Workshop, and for the fourth year it was open free to the public on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, welcoming nearly 1,200 visitors.

The Museum is located at 2929 Richmond Rd.  Beachwood, Ohio 44122
(216). Learn more: www.maltzmuseum.org, 216.593-0575.

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Nonprofit Directors and Trustees:

If you struggle to manage and retain your volunteers or if you are unsure of how best to use volunteer talent to help your organization grow, then Grassroots Networking Night: Tapping into Talent may be the event for you.

On Wednesday, February 8, 5:30 —7:30 pm, you can meet, greet, ask questions, make connections, and have some fun in a version of “speed dating” with invited presenters who will share tips from their successful real-world experiences building a movement around their organization’s mission.

Featured presenters are Joy Banish, Executive Director of Greater Cleveland Volunteers; Jeff Griffiths, Founder and Executive Director of HandsOn Northeast Ohio; and Ann Kent, Vice President, Services to Nonprofits at Business Volunteers Unlimited.

WHERE:  The Foundation Center-Cleveland 1422 Euclid Ave. Suite 1600, Cleveland, OH 44115

 REGISTER: http://bit.ly/w4sFuT or call 216-861-1933 x325.

COST:  Free.

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