Bill T. Jones Documentary Wins Peabody Award Streaming Now
Rosalynde LeBlanc and Tom Hurwitz
AfroPoP documentary Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters has won a 2024 Peabody Award. The Rosalynde LeBlanc and Tom Hurwitz documentary is about the dance Bill T. Jones created during the A.I.D.S. crisis when members of his dance company and his partner Arnie Zane died of the illness in the ’80s. The film opened season 15 of the documentary series AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange co-produced by Black Public Media and WORLD. The film focuses on LeBlanc’s dance studio at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, and viewers see her students working to learn Jones’ D-Man in the Waters ballet. Jones created the dance in 1989 and named it after Demian Acquavella, who was a star dancer of the Bill T. Jones Arnie Zane Company.
“We are profoundly honored to have our work recognized by this award that speaks to excellence in storytelling, and we sincerely thank everyone involved with us in funding, making, and distributing Can You Bring It…,” said LeBlanc and Hurwitz.
The filmmakers will receive the accolade at the 84th Annual Peabody Awards on Sunday, June 9, at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. Acknowledging the award the critically acclaimed documentary will stream for free on the BPM website, WORLDchannel.org, and YouTube through July 9, 2024.
Black Public Media Awarded $610,000 At Annual PitchBLACK Forum
Black Public Media Executive Director Leslie Fields-Cruz with BPM Trailblazer Award honoree Sam Pollard (photo credit Ed Marshall, Ed Marshall Photography)
Black Public Media (BPM) awarded a total of $610,000 to film and immersive projects and creatives at its seventh PitchBLACK Forum — the largest pitch competition for independent filmmakers and creative technologists developing new projects about the global Black experience — at the PitchBLACK Awards on Thursday, April 25, 2024. The figure was the highest ever amount awarded at PitchBLACK. Sponsored by Netflix and PBS, the event — held at The Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse at Lincoln Center — was hosted by Baltimore-based comedian Sir Alex and included the presentation of the BPM Trailblazer Award to Emmy-winning filmmaker Sam Pollard.
The winner of the $150,000 film award is Zenón, a documentary about the life of Puerto Rican fisherman and revolutionary Carlos “Taso” Zenón who spearheaded protests against the U.S. Navy’s occupation, exploitation, and environmental degradation of his home, the island of Vieques. Puerto Rican director Juan C. Dávila and producer Camila Rodríguez Estrada accepted the grant for their film about environmental racism on an island where the majority of residents are Black Puerto Ricans. Judges of the PitchBLACK Film Forum were Chloe Gbai, Chris Hastings, and Sabrina Schmidt-Gordon.
Image Frequency Modulation, an interactive memory broadcasting station investigating images, ancestral memory, oral transmission, and metaphors of radio technologies as sites of possibility for the African diaspora, won a $50,000 immersive project award. Its creator is Ethel-Ruth Tawe and the producer is Elisha Tawe, and they are a Cameroonian brother and sister team. The Museum of Black Joy: Ring Shouts, Rituals & Rising Signs by Philadelphia creator Andrea Walls, received a $25,000 immersive project award. It is a four-wall video installation conceived as a cultural embrace, resonating with a multi-media narrative that centers Black Joy as it emerges from history, triumphantly, with style, creativity, and grace. Judges of the PitchBLACK Immersive Forum were Errol King, Angela Tucker, and Jennifer Scott.
The PitchBLACK Forum was hosted by advertising futurist Tameka Kee.
“Every year, PitchBLACK serves as a reminder to our team, and to the wider industry, of the amazing pool of talent in our media-making communities,” said Leslie Fields-Cruz, executive director of BPM. “What this year’s PitchBLACK participants share is a commitment to novel storytelling. Their work is innovative, enlightening, and entertaining, a hopeful harbinger of the future of public media.”
The Jacquie Jones Memorial Fund award was presented to American Sons, a documentary project by Andrew J. Gonzales and Laura Varela. The $380,000 award will assist the duo in completing their film, which follows a cadre of Marines after deployment in Afghanistan as they reunite over the loss of their brother and work to heal from physical and emotional wounds. The film is slated for a PBS premiere in 2025. Made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the fund supports makers in the tradition of the late Peabody Award-winning director and BPM’s second executive director, Jacquie Jones, who helped foster diverse content creators. For more on the Fund, visit BPM.
The evening featured a Filmmaker Chat between NPR host Brittany Luse and Pollard, who spoke about his celebrated career, which includes acclaimed films and series like Eyes on the Prize, MLK/FBI,Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power, and Mr. SOUL!, and his editing of several iconic Spike Lee films. As part of PitchBLACK, a four-city retrospective of Pollard’s films and virtual screenings runs through May 5. In-person screenings took place in New York City (April 11-21) and more are scheduled for Los Angeles (April 27), Santa Barbara (April 30), and Baltimore (May 3). Some screenings will be followed by conversations with the filmmaker. The New York screenings were produced in partnership with ImageNation. For more information, visit BPM.
Ethel-Ruth Tawe also received the Nonso Christian Ugbode (NCU) Fellowship, an award founded in 2016 and named after BPM’s late director of digital initiatives to support creative technologists under age 30. The rising star has already received the Magnum Foundation 2022 Counter Histories Grant Program for her project Image Frequency Modulation, which competed in PitchBLACK and also was recently selected by the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) 2023 DocLab Forum. Tawe will receive a $5,000 award.
With the 2024 PitchBLACK film and immersive grants, BPM — a Harlem-based national nonprofit that funds and distributes original content — has awarded more than $1.8 million to 23 projects since launching PitchBLACK in 2015. Some of the projects selected in earlier years have gone on to premiere 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.
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. 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.
For more information on BPM, visit blackpublicmedia.org. Follow BPM on social media at follow the organization on Facebook and Instagram @blackpublicmedia and watch the PitchBLACK events on the BPM YouTube channel.
Philadelphia creator Andrea Walls accepts the $25,000 PitchBLACK Immersive Award. Photo credit: Ed MarshallBlack Public Media executives Carol Bash, Leslie Fields-Cruz, and Denise A Greene congratulate Jacquie Jones Memorial Fund winner Andrew J. Gonzales, who won project funding for his documentary American Sons at Black Public Media’s PitchBLACK Awards. Photo credit: Ed Marshall
Harlemite Grandmother Sherri Culpepper Forced to House Squatters for Over a Decade by New York City Agencies In Brownstone Regentrification Effort
Fourth-generation Harlemite, Sherri Culpepper, who took over her family’s brownstones in 2012, has been in an ongoing battle with varying New York City agencies to legally maintain ownership of her two properties. In the process, numerous freeloading individuals have been “legally” housed in one of her brownstones for twelve years, residing there without paying rent and utilities or upkeeping any maintenance! Culpepper is in an ongoing battle against the squatters and the city, fighting to harness support for her plight as well as other homeowners in a similar dilemma. Culpepper has filed a formal legal complaint (Supreme Court Index #159115 /2022) against numerous New York city agencies and her daughter, Bria, has started a Change.org petition to support her mom.
Harlem, NY – Sherri Culpepper is a hard-working grandmother who has enjoyed an illustrious and multi-faceted career. The veteran urban radio producer has never said no to a challenge. She even changed careers after the age of 50, becoming an operating engineer, mastering a large variety of construction equipment, including cranes, bulldozers, and front-end loaders before joining the International Union of Operating Engineers – Local 15, not a small feat as a Black woman. However, the predicament she now finds herself in while trying to preserve her family legacy and save her home is a situation she never saw coming.
The fourth-generation Harlemite, who took over her family’s brownstones in 2012, has been in a twelve-year wrangle with varying New York City agencies to legally maintain ownership of her two properties. In the process, numerous freeloading individuals are now “legally” housed in one of her brownstones and have been residing there for twelve years without paying rent and utilities or upkeeping any maintenance! Culpepper has filed a formal legal complaint (Supreme Court Index #159115 /2022) against numerous New York City agencies, including The City of New York, the New York City Department of Finance, the New York City Department of Buildings, and the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. She is in an ongoing battle against the squatters and the city, fighting to harness support for her plight as well as other homeowners in a similar dilemma. Her daughter, Bria, has started a Change.org petition to support her mom.
Culpepper’s building has been systematically entangled in a web of condemning bureaucracy. First, her single-family home was erroneously designated as a Single Room Occupancy (SRO). SROs are a form of housing that is typically designed for persons with low or minimal incomes who rent small, furnished single rooms with a bed, chair and sometimes a small desk. Second, her biggest blow came in 2014 when the home was unceremoniously “selected” by the Housing Preservation and Development’s (HPD) Alternate Enforcement Program, better known as the “slumlord” program, and served with 52 violations and fines. Forty-nine of them had been corrected decades before, but never administratively removed from the record books, in turn creating additional ongoing issues and setbacks for her. Both the SRO and HPD codes have allowed the freeloaders “legal,” no-rent housing.
As one of a diminishing number of original Harlem brownstone homeowners, Culpepper alleges these efforts were enacted to force her to sell her historical property in a massive gentrification effort seen throughout many urban cities. In addition to the SRO designation and HPD’s tactics, Culpepper has been continuously served an onslaught of ongoing violations and fines over the years.
“Brownstones hold generational history and wealth here in New York, yet, per gentrification, so many of the original owners have been displaced by the city and corporate contractors coming to takeover. I have refused to sell and so here we are, over a decade later and I find myself with more than seven tax liens, numerous retained and since fired attorneys, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, erroneous violations, legal fees, and interest. And on top of that, I am still taking care of numerous people living free in my home because the city has sanctioned it. I believe my so-called “tenants” are being supported and encouraged to create violations, damage, and vandalize my property!” cites Culpepper. “It’s disappointing that in 2024, redlining and systemic racism continue to hold and prevent certain communities from what’s just and fair.”
When Culpepper took ownership of the home in 2012, she also inherited a house full of cousins who had been living rent-free because of family ties. The cousins started renting out spaces in the home to total strangers. Along with contending with the cousins and new tenants, Culpepper, a grandmother, and mother of three, found herself in ongoing legal entanglements with the city. Her home was identified as one of the most distressed in the community district, despite not fitting the criteria required of the program. In fact, she attests that she has been overly attentive with the upkeep of the property because of the skills garnered from her professional construction background.
Culpepper’s great-grandparents moved into the brownstone in 1929, with a family of nine people at the time, including her great-grandfather’s church occupying the parlor floor. The brownstone holds deep, cultural, and familial ties as her great-grandfather was also the accountant for freedom fighter, Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey in the early 1930’s! In addition, her great uncle was one of the Port Chicago 50, a group wrongly accused of mutiny by the U.S. Navy in 1944 and represented by NAACP’s attorney, the Honorable Thurgood Marshall. Until 1974, for 42 years, the family rented the property before the owner finally sold the real estate to her great-grandmother and four of her children. For the last 88 years, the only people living in the building were immediate family members and an occasional close family friend passing through.
Culpepper’s ultimate dream after securing and maintaining ownership of her brownstones is to use her family’s property to continue their legacy of community activism. She hopes to revise her brownstone as an inner city, sustainable, eco-friendly workspace and teach children in the neighborhood about organic gardening, water harvesting, creating green roofs, and utilizing recycled building materials for new constructions.
To contact Sherri Culpepper and support her effort to save her Harlem brownstones, sign the petition at Change.org. She can also be reached at sherriculpepper@gmail.com .
Slum Village’s F.U.N. Gets A New Release Date
Slum Village has a new release date for their album F.U.N. and has shared the tracklist and cover art. Their first album in almost a decade has guest appearances from Robert Glasper, Larry June, The Dramatics, and more. They are currently on their FUN Since 92 tour in Europe and when they return to the United States they will appear at the Gazebo Festival in May. They will also join Rakim and Talib Kweli for Panic In LA on May 15th. F.U.N. comes out on May 3rd via Ne’Astra Music/Virgin Music Group and can be pre-ordered now.
