MORNINGSIDE PARK

Location: Lower Lawn. Enter From Morningside Ave at 114th Street

Rain Venue: Church of the Master, 86 Morningside Ave. (btw. 121st & 122nd St.) 

 

Wednesday, July 7th

Music: First Corinthian Baptist Church Choir (7:00 pm)

Film: Say Amen, Somebody (8:30 pm)

(George Nierenberg, USA, 100 min.)

This film captures the wisdom of elder gospel stars “Professor” Thomas A. Dorsey and “Mother” Willie Mae Ford, who recall the conservative resistance they faced towards the rhythm and blues inflections of the “new” gospel music they wrote and performed.

Co-presented by the Maysles Cinema with support from Target ®

Thursday, July 8th

Music: Jazzmobile's Harlem International Jazz Festival Presents: Afro-Haitian Jazz with Buyu Ambroise (7:00 pm)

Film: I Bring What I Love (8:30 pm)

(Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, USA, 102 min.)

The film chronicles the difficult journey Senegalese pop sensation Youssou Ndour undertakes to assume his true callling.

Co-presented by the Maysles Cinema with support from Target ®

MARCUS GARVEY PARK

Location: Lawn A located on the Madison Avenue side of the park between 122nd and 124th Streets

Rain Venue: Inside the Pelham Fritz Recreation Center

Wednesday, July 14th

Music: The National Jazz Museum All-Stars' Tribute to Nina Simone (7:00 pm)

Film: Nina Simone Great Performances: College Concerts and Interviews (8:30 pm)

(Andy Stroud, USA, 60 mins.)

A rare film of this radical artist in performance and in interviews where she shares her opinions on the role of the artist and race relations. 

Co-presented by the Maysles Cinema with support from Target ®

Thursday, July 15th 

Music: Soul Singer Jeremy James performs a live acoustic set (7:30 pm)

Film: Film: Still Bill (8:30 pm)

(Damani Baker and Alex Vlack, USA, 78 min.)

Still Bill is an intimate portrait of soul legend Bill Withers, best known for his classics “Ain’t No Sunshine,” “Lean On Me,” “Lovely Day,” “Grandma’s Hands,” and “Just the Two of Us.” With his soulful delivery and warm, heartfelt sincerity, Withers has written the songs that have – and always will – resonate deeply within the fabric of our times. Through concert footage, journeys to his birthplace, interviews with music legends, his family and closest friends, STILL BILL presents the story of an artist who has written some of the most beloved songs in our time and who truly understands the heart and soul of a man.

Co-presented by the ImageNation Cinema Foundation

JACKIE ROBINSON PARK

Location: 150th St. and Bradhurst Ave.

Rain Venue: Inside the Jackie Robinson Recreation Center at 146th St. & Bradhurst Ave.

Wednesday, July 21st

Performance Exhibition: Harlem GOJU Association (7:30pm)

Short: Life and Times of Little Jimmy (8:30pm)

(B. Alison McDonald, USA, 15 min.)

This film is a portrait of a young black writer isolated in the God-fearing ghetto of Depression era Harlem. Rejected by his mother and his best friend, Jimmy seeks refuge in his relationship with Glenda, a prostitute. Herself a lost soul, she cannot comfort or console him, but offers him something he's never had before — acceptance. 

Film: Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun

(Sam Pollard, USA 83 min.)

Synopsis: Zora Neale Hurston, path-breaking novelist, pioneering anthropologist and one of the first black women to enter the American literary canon (Their Eyes Were Watching God). This definitive film biography, eighteen years in the making, portrays Zora in all her complexity: gifted, flamboyant, and controversial but always fiercely original.

Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun intersperses insights from leading scholars and rare footage of the rural South (some of it shot by Zora herself) with re-enactments of a revealing 1943 radio interview. Hurston biographer, Cheryl Wall, traces Zora's unique artistic vision back to her childhood in Eatonville, Florida, the first all-black incorporated town in the U.S. There Zora was surrounded by proud, self-sufficient, self-governing black people, deeply immersed in African American folk traditions. Her father, a Baptist preacher, carpenter and three times mayor, reminded Zora every Sunday morning that ordinary black people could be powerful poets. Her mother encouraged her to "jump at de' sun," never to let being black and a woman stand in the way of her dreams.

Co-presented by Reel Sisters of the Diaspora

Thursday, July 22nd

Musical performance: Addicts Rehabilitation Center (ARC) Choir (7:30pm)

Short: A Harlem Mother (8:30pm)

(Ivana Todorovic, USA, 14 min.)

In 1998, 18 year old Latraun Parker made a documentary about the harshness growing up in Harlem. Eight years later he was shot dead on the street. Today his mother Jean fights youth gun violence and helps other parents survive the pain. A short documentary A Harlem Mother tells its story from the dual perspectives of Jean and Latron, using footage from his own documentary.

Short: Double Dutch Divas

(Nicole Franklin, USA, 39 min.)

Documentary, 39 minutes

 

Double Dutch Divas is a short film derived from the feature-length documentary I Was Made to Love Her:  the Double Dutch Documentary.  The film follows a group of women’s passion for a childhood game that becomes a life time dedication and inspiration for women worldwide. Double Dutch Divas traces the group’s 20-year history of togetherness and friendship as they jump to life’s rhythms.  No wonder why their names are Smooth, Heart, Sassy, Lady Di, Spice, Spirit, Faith and Joy.

Film: Slap The Donkey

(Edward J. Harris II, USA, 79 min.)

Slap The Donkey Explores the Black political movement of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, as seen over the shoulder of the community activist Al Sharpton, who makes his bid for the Democratic nomination.

Co-presented by Reel Sisters of the Diaspora

ST. NICHOLAS PARK   

Location: 135th St. & St. Nicholas Ave.

Rain Venue: St. Mark’s Church, 55 Edgecombe Ave. (at 137th St.)

Wednesday, July 28th

Music: DJARARA, Haitian Rara band (7:30pm)

Film: The Other Side of the Water (8:30pm)

(Jeremy Robbins and Magali Damas, USA, 72 min.)

The Other Side of the Water follows a group of young immigrants who take an ancient music from the hills of Haiti and reinvent it on the streets of Brooklyn. The journey of this unlikely band offers a unique insight into the Haitian-American experience -- a rare glimpse into a world of music, spirituality, and cultural activism.  Part-carnival, part-vodou ceremony, and grassroots protest, “Rara” is one of the most breathtaking and contested forms of music in the Americas. Rara originally served as a voice of the slaves in their revolt against the French, and as the voice of those struggling against ongoing dictatorships in Haiti. This documentary follows the journey of DJARARA – the only sustained rara band in America – through a hidden New York landscape of vodou temples, underground economies, violent politics, and ground-shaking music. 

Co-presented by the ImageNation Cinema Foundation

Thursday, July 29th

Music: DJ Cool Gee (7:30 pm)

Film: The Princess & the Frog (8:30 pm)

(Ron Clements and John Musker, USA, 97 min.)

Starring Anika Noni Rose, Oprah Winfrey, Terrence Howard, Keith David, Bruno Campos and many others, The Princess & the Frog is an Academy-award nominated animated film set in Jazz Age-era New Orleans and centers on a young girl named Tiana and her fateful kiss with a frog prince who desperately wants to be human again. 

Co-presented by the ImageNation Cinema Foundation

The 9th annual Historic Harlem Parks Film Festival is a production of the Historic Harlem Parks Coalition. It is made possible in part with public funds from both Council Member Inez E. Dickens, 9th C.D., Speaker Christine Quinn and the New York City Council as well as the Fund for Creative Communities/New York State Council on the Arts Decentralization Program, administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Additional funding has been provided by the Harlem Community Arts Fund of the Harlem Arts Alliance, The Richman Group Development Corp. and the Harlem Community Developoment Corporation.

Programming is provided by our Film Partners:  The Maysles Institute (Morningside & Marcus Garvey Parks), ImageNation Cinema Foundation (Marcus Garvey & St. Nicholas Parks) and Reel Sisters of the Diaspora (Jackie Robinson Park). The Festival thanks Partnerships for Parks and the NYC Dept. of Parks and Recreation for their guidance and in-kind assistance.