Black Public Media’s Pitchblack Forum and Awards Set for April 24 and 25

NEW YORK (April 9, 2024) — Black Public Media (BPM) will hold its seventh PitchBLACK Forum — now the nation’s largest pitch competition for independent filmmakers and creative technologists producing works about the Black experience — on Wednesday, April 24, in Manhattan. Producers and technologists will compete for up to $150,000 in funding for documentary projects and up to $50,000 in funding for immersive projects before a panel of media professionals and an in-person and virtual audience of funders, distributors and industry leaders. Winners will be announced at the PitchBLACK Awards on Thursday, April 25, honoring award-winning director, producer and film editor Sam Pollard. 

The annual event, which draws a who’s who of public media, commercial television, documentary film and funders, is sponsored by Netflix and PBS. Netflix’s continued support is part of the company’s Fund for Creative Equity, a dedicated effort to help build new opportunities for underrepresented communities within entertainment.

Since launching PitchBLACK in 2015, BPM — a Harlem-based national nonprofit which funds and distributes original content — has awarded more than $1.6 million to 20 projects, some of which have premiered on PBS, WORLD, Create and PBS Digital. Alumni of the program have gone on to produce film, television and immersive projects for PBS, CNN, Showtime, Netflix, HBO, BET, NBC, The CW and more.

“Every year, PitchBLACK presents an amazing array of talented creatives and their extraordinary projects exploring the past, present and future of the Black diaspora,” said Leslie Fields-Cruz, executive director of BPM. “We are excited to see and hear what the participants have in store for us this year and, ultimately, for audiences across the country.”

Competing in the film segment of the PitchBLACK Forum are: Everette S. Hamlette (producer Craig T. Williams); Daryl B. Jones (producer Kristin Lesko), Jason Goldman (producer Emily Kuester), Reniqua Allen-Lamphere, and Juan C. Dávila (producer Camila Rodríguez). Creators competing in the immersive segment of the PitchBLACK Forum include: MaryAnn Talavera, Baff Akoto (producer Lidz-Ama Appiah), Ethel-Ruth Tawe, Andrea “Philly” Walls, Jazsalyn and Johannes Barfield. The PitchBLACK Forum takes place at The Greene Space on April 24 from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. (film) and 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. (immersive). The Forum is moderated by advertising futurist Tameka Kee.

Winners of the PitchBLACK Forum will be announced at the PitchBLACK Awards on Thursday, April 25 at 7 p.m. Baltimore-based comic Sir Alex is back as emcee for the event, which honors the prolific and trailblazing film editor and director Sam Pollard. Known for his directorial work

capturing iconic Black figures and history in films like Eyes On The Prize, Maynard, MLK/FBI, Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power and Mr. SOUL! and his work as a film editor for some of Spike Lee’s most renowned films, Pollard will receive the BPM Trailblazer Award for his excellence in cinema and his dedication to mentoring the next generation of filmmakers. With the honor, Pollard joins the ranks of other BPM Trailblazer Award winners Orlando Bagwell, Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson, Yoruba Richen and Marco Williams. As part of the evening, which takes place at the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse of Manhattan’s Lincoln Center, NPR host Brittany Luse (It’s Been a Minute) will interview Pollard about his illustrious career. 

As part of its tribute to Pollard, BPM will present a three-city retrospective of his films as well as virtual screenings from April 22 to May 5. In-person screenings will take place in Baltimore, Los Angeles and New York City with some screenings followed by conversations with the filmmaker. The New York screenings are produced in partnership with ImageNation. For more information on the retrospective, visit https://blackpublicmedia.org/pitch-black/pb-2024/.

The awards program will also include a presentation of the Nonso Christian Ugbode Fellowship, named after BPM’s late director of digital initiatives. This year’s recipient will be named at the event. 

The recipient of the Jacquie Jones Memorial Fund will also be named. Made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the fund supports makers in the tradition of the Peabody Award-winning director Jacquie Jones, the former executive director of BPM, who helped foster diverse content creators prior to her death in January 2018.  

Entertainment industry executives and funders wishing to attend the PitchBLACK Forum in person may request access at https://forms.gle/XpcR5MUWEzL667zS8.  

Additional support for PitchBLACK comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; Acton Family Giving; New York Community Trust; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; New York State Council on the Arts; National Endowment for the Arts; Shutterstock; Unity Charitable Fund, a fund of Tides Foundation; and Sonder Foundation.

To learn more about BPM and the PitchBLACK projects, visit blackpublicmedia.org, follow the organization on Facebook and Instagram @blackpublicmedia and watch the PitchBLACK events on the BPM YouTube channel.

ABOUT

Sam Pollard has spent more than three decades chronicling the Black experience as a feature film and television video editor, and a documentary producer/director. His first assignment as a documentary producer came in 1989 on Henry Hampton’s Blackside production, Eyes On The Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads. His contribution to the series earned an Emmy Award. In the years since, Pollard’s prolific body of work has won multiple industry accolades including: three Primetime Emmys, two Daytime Emmys, one News & Documentary Emmy, four 

Peabodys — including the 2021 Career Achievement Award — a 2023 IDA Best Music Documentary award for Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes, and a 1998 Oscar nomination for 

Four Little Girls. Four Little Girls, a feature-length documentary about the 1963 Birmingham church bombings, is just one of Pollard’s numerous collaborations with Spike Lee. In 2020, 

Pollard was named among Black Public Media’s prestigious list of 40 public media Game Changers in celebration of the organization's 40th anniversary. His most recent releases, The League, about the Negro baseball league; and Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes, premiered in 2023. 

Tameka Kee curates unforgettable experiences and thought-provoking conversations. She has produced dozens of live experiences, from conferences and workshops for publicly-traded companies, to international trade shows with 10,000+ attendees. A former journalist and analyst, Key currently serves as the deputy managing director for Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM), a division of the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) focused on developing research that highlights best practices, innovation and areas of improvement in measurement and data usage across the media and advertising ecosystem.    

Brittany Luse is an award-winning journalist, on-air host and cultural critic. She is currently the host of It's Been a Minute from NPR. Previously, Luse hosted For Colored Nerds, The Nod and Sampler podcasts, and co-hosted and executive produced The Nod with Brittany and Eric, a daily streaming show. She's written for Vulture and Harper's Bazaar, among others, and edited for the podcasts Planet Money and Not Past It. Luse and her work have been profiled by publications like The New York Times, The New Yorker and Teen Vogue.

Comedian Alex “Sir Alex” Robinson hails from Baltimore. He has been featured on Kevin Hart’s and Comedy Central’s “Hart of the City” series. Alex also produces and hosts one of the longest operating bi-weekly attractions in Baltimore. Every other Sunday night, you can catch live entertainment with “Sunday’s @ The Port” in the Baltimore area. Follow Sir Alex to continue to keep up with his shows and events at @Sir_AlexR on all social media platforms!

Black Public Media (BPM) supports the development of visionary content creators and distributes stories about the global Black experience to inspire a more equitable and inclusive future. For more than 40 years, BPM has addressed the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, while also helping public broadcasters fulfill their obligations to the American public.  BPM continues to address historical, contemporary, and systemic challenges that traditionally impede the development and distribution of Black stories. For more information, visit blackpublicmedia.org. Follow @blackpublicmedia on Instagram and Facebook, and on X (formerly Twitter) @BLKPublicMedia.  

For interview and media inquiries, contact:

Cheryl L. Duncan Cheryl Duncan & Company Inc. 201-552-9239 (O) cheryl@cdcprnews.com