Harvard's Black Film Project will spotlight Black history and culture through documentary, narrative stories

Harvard University recently announced the creation of the Black Film Project, which is designed to support filmmakers of any race who illuminate Black history and culture through nonfiction films.

The project, founded by Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, will be housed at the HutchinsCenter in partnership with Harvard’s Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies.

“I conceived of the Black Film Project as a way of contributing to the growing momentum of filmmaking about the Black experience, and as a way ofhonoring the field that has given me my second career,” said Gates, who is also the executive producer, host, and writer of the four-part docu-series“Making Black America,” in a press release. “We want the Black Film Project to identify, celebrate, and seed the work of talented artists of any ethnicity and, in doing so, to create an environment in which this renaissance can continue for many years to come.”

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