A Black Film Festival Aims For a More Universal Image; Showcase for New Movies That Avoid Stereotyped Heroes

When she was trying to get a distributor for ''All About You,'' her gentle romantic comedy about two black people who have given up on love but find each other despite themselves, Christine Swanson, a 30-year-old filmmaker, was told that it was ''not edgy enough,'' she said.

''All About You'' has no violence, no broad comedic characters and no offensive language, and the sex, by today's terms, is pretty tame. So, no distribution deal, Ms. Swanson said.

But ''All About You,'' which stars Renée Goldsberry, Terron Brooks and Debbie Allen, will finally make it to the screen on Saturday and Sunday at the Urbanworld Film Festival, founded primarily to showcase films by and about blacks. The festival began yesterday and continues through the weekend at the Loew's State Theater in Times Square and at the Magic Johnson theaters in Harlem.

''We don't have any images that are representative of our community as a whole,'' said Ms. Swanson, who, like other filmmakers in the festival, said the problem was that blacks lack real power in Hollywood. What sells to white audiences is images of black men as criminals or as comedians like Martin Lawrence or Eddie Murphy, critics and scholars say.

''There is not a single black person who can greenlight a picture in the United States,'' said Stacy Spikes, who founded Urbanworld five years ago, and is now its chairman emeritus. ''It's like living in America and not having a vote,'' he said. ''You are a citizen of the theatrical world, but you don't have a voice.''

He added that he could not find a single black film on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest Movies. Meanwhile, Mr. Spikes repeated the complaint often voiced by African-Americans in the industry: that they make up only a tiny percentage of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the society of professionals that votes on the industry's biggest award, the Oscar.

A spokeswoman for Urbanworld said that she had gone over the list of academy members and could identify only a handful of blacks. The academy does not keep records of members' races, said John Pavlik, a spokesman, but ''there aren't very many,'' he said. ''I won't deny that.''

As a result, Mr. Spikes said, few African-Americans have won Academy Awards. Sidney Poitier won the best actor Oscar in 1963 for ''Lilies of the Field.'' Hattie McDaniel, Lou Gossett Jr., Denzel Washington, Whoopi Goldberg and Cuba Gooding Jr. have all won as best supporting actors. John Singleton was nominated for best director and best original screenplay for ''Boyz N the Hood.'' (Spike Lee also won a special student award in 1983 for ''Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads.'')

But Urbanworld is here to remedy that lack of representation by showing blacks in a different light, Mr. Spikes said. They are full participants in American society, he observed, and want to see images on the screen of who they really are. ''We can drive cars, we can afford homes,'' he said. ''We want more sense of what it is like to see ourselves in the film industry, some positive and different ideas of what we are like. Spike Lee can't be the only one.''

Melvin James, the director of ''Honeybee,'' a film about a black woman who is a boxer that will be screened tonight and tomorrow, said: ''It's more difficult to do something new as a black filmmaker. It doesn't matter if I want to make a film about a natural disaster. It's more difficult to make a film about a black love story, getting people to believe people want to see black love on the screen.''

Still, Mr. Spikes said, ''things keep getting better all the time. More movies are getting made. More people are slowly climbing up in distribution.''

Participants feel that Urbanworld is helping to create an audience for black films. The festival has also founded a distribution company, which released its first film, ''The Visit,'' about a prison inmate, last April.

Many of the feature films that have had their premieres at the festival have been box office hits, though they have often already had distributors, Mr. Spikes said. Among the successes was ''Blue Streak,'' a comedy about a jewel thief, which became No. 1 at the box office after it opened in September 1999.

''The Best Man,'' a romantic comedy about a wedding, also had a successful opening after it was screened at Urbanworld in 1999, prompting an e-mail campaign by festival viewers urging people to see it. ''How Stella Got Her Groove Back'' and ''Soul Food,'' which both had their premieres at Urbanworld, were each No. 2 during their first week of release.

This year the festival has a feast of about 70 films. Last night was the premiere of ''Lockdown,'' a prison drama with a black cast directed by John Luessenhop, who is white. It is competing with 16 other films for the feature film prize. Among them are ''Home Invaders,'' a crime story written and directed by Gregory Wilson; ''Love Come Down,'' written and directed by Clement Virgo, about two half-brothers, one black, one white; ''Get Down or Lay Down,'' a gangster movie by Abdul Malik Abbott; and ''Harlem Aria,'' written and directed by William Jennings, about a mentally retarded man with a remarkable singing voice.

Other features include ''Gang Tapes,'' directed by Adam Ripp and set in South Central Los Angeles; ''Rage,'' by the Nigerian-born filmmaker Newton I. Aduaka, set in inner-city London; and ''Bluehill Ave.,'' by Craig Ross Jr., about drug dealers in Boston's South End.

There are also 10 films competing for the documentary prize, including ''Beyond Tara: The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel.'' The film, directed by Madison Davis-Lacy, chronicles the early history of blacks in Hollywood, when virtually the only parts available to them were as maids or porters. Also among the documentaries is ''Joe Gotta Go!,'' directed by Tracii McGregor, about the election of the first black mayor of Selma, Ala.

In addition, the festival has sections devoted to Latin and Asian films, and a director's spotlight featuring a conversation with Mr. Singleton. There will also be a series of special screenings, including ''O,'' a prep-school version of Shakespeare's ''Othello,'' directed by Tim Blake Nelson and starring Mekhi Phifer, Josh Hartnett, Julia Stiles and Martin Sheen, on Saturday night, and ''Rush Hour 2,'' directed by Brett Ratner, and starring Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan, at midnight tonight.

Although the films in this year's Urbanworld festival have their share of ghetto heroes, many are notable for the breadth of the black experience they portray. Mr. James's ''Honeybee,'' written and produced by Roderick Powell, features a wealthy black family in which the father is a successful lawyer. (The main character in Ms. Swanson's ''All About You'' is considering law school, and the man she falls in love with is also the son of a successful black lawyer.)

''Lift,'' directed by DeMane Davis and Khari Streeter, and written by Ms. Davis, to be screened tomorrow and Saturday, is about a black shoplifter, but the film also portrays the complex and affectionate bonds of the family surrounding her. These films try to balance the particular experiences of black Americans and the universal experiences of all Americans, black and white.

Like ''All About You,'' both ''Honeybee'' and ''Lift'' lack distributors. When ''Lift'' was shown this year at the New Directors/New Films Festival at the Museum of Modern Art, Elvis Mitchell praised it in The New York Times, saying that it ''teems with life.'' And one scene, in which the film's star, Kerry Washington, as the shoplifting daughter, takes some stolen goods to a beauty parlor, where customers and staff rush to pore over them, was, Mr. Mitchell wrote, ''one of the funniest, most truthful, and most gruesome movie moments this year.''

But ''distributors can say, 'You've done this film about black people that's not funny, that doesn't fit into their perception of what black film should be,' '' Mr. Streeter said.

Ms. Davis wrote a first draft of ''Lift'' in 1996, and was invited to submit it to the Sundance Labs. She and Mr. Streeter showed four scenes from the film at Sundance, and their work was critiqued by experts like Agnieszka Holland, Mark Rydell and Mr. Washington. ''Denzel sat with us while we were editing all day,'' Ms. Davis said. ''You can ask them anything.''

The script attracted the attention of James Mangold, the writer and director of ''Girl, Interrupted,'' and the producer Cathy Konrad. In turn, they took it to John Hart and Jeffrey Sharp of Hart Sharp Entertainment, which produced ''Boys Don't Cry.'' Hart Sharp gave them the ''under $3 million'' necessary to make it, Ms. Davis said. ''Lift'' is about ''what we will do to be loved,'' she added. ''The search for the self through love.''

''To have two white men respond to it the way I want black girls to respond to it,'' she said, referring to Mr. Hart and Mr. Sharp, ''made me understand we had hit on a universal truth.''

But isn't there a danger that black film festivals will themselves create a ghetto for black films? Not at all, Mr. Spikes said. The state of black films today is comparable to the state of black music before Motown, he said. ''Motown globalized black music instead of ghettoizing it,'' he observed. ''It made black music more demanding and exciting. I think that's about to happen to black film, and I think Urbanworld will be the catalyst for it.''

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A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 2, 2001, Section E, Page 1 of the National edition with the headline: A Black Film Festival Aims For a More Universal Image; Showcase for New Movies That Avoid Stereotyped Heroes. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe