The Festival is honored to present these tremendous artists with this year’s Renaissance Awards as part of our 20th Annual Opening Night festivities.
The 20th Anniversary Harlem International Film Festival (Hi XX) kicks off Wednesday, September 17 at 7 pm at Aaron Davis Hall welcoming the 2025 cadre of festival filmmakers to the red carpet and the Annual Renaissance Awards presentation directly followed by the Opening Night screening event with the theme of Harlem Love, a love letter to locally produced filmmakers and their work.
The Festival is honored to be joined by these tremendous artists and present them with this year’s Renaissance Awards as part of the 20th Annual Opening Night festivities:
Stanley Nelson, the foremost Black documentarian and Harlem’s iconic and most prominent and prolific filmmaker; Vernon Reid, the legendary soundtrack producer, double Grammy- winning guitarist and co-founder of the Black Rock Coalition and Living Colour; and Kara Young, Harlem’s own rising star who became the first African American actress to be nominated for an Tony four years in a row and the first to receive two consecutive Tonys in 2024 and 2025. More information about them below.
The Renaissance Awards presentation will be followed by the film screening below. The evening will conclude with a Q & A with the filmmakers directly following their films.
OPENING NIGHT BEGINS AT 7 PM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17
AARON DAVIS HALL, CITY COLLEGE
129 CONVENT AVENUE (AT 135 STREET)
MARIAN ANDERSON THEATRE
HARLEM LOVE
The Original Harlem Globetrotters
Director: Loradonna Frucci, Lizbeth Fuentes
Country: United States, Running Time: 12 min
Basketball players Hot Shot and Cheese, visit Maysles and their film students to reconnect with Harlem from behind their lenses. Lizbeth and Loradonna got exclusive interviews with the players and behind the scenes access to their 10-day residency.
Two is One and One is None
Director: Annette Hampton
Country: United States, Running Time: 10 min
Being prepared is one thing, but there’s also being paranoid. Briefly speaking on her own experience Annette turns the question of emotions, expression and preparation to her friends.
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Director: Camara Ife Aaron, Felicia Shayda Sobhani
Country: Dominica, Germany, Slovakia, Switzerland, United States, United States, Running Time: 9:52
12-year-old Liv, the star of her middle school soccer team and its only girl. When she gets her period in the middle of playoffs, her best friends, Zora and Priya, have to help her find a pad so she can get back on the field and play. Along the way, they find an unlikely ally in a member of Liv’s all-male team.
Harlem Dawn
Director: Cathleen Campbell
Country: United States, Running Time: 3 min
For the past 9 years, I’ve kept a not-quite-daily photo diary of sunrise above the Harlem rooftops that i see from my window.
Harlem Wine
Director: Natasha Beste
Country: United States, Running Time: 3 min
Harpist Maurice Draughn performs his original composition, titled “Harlem Wine,’ captured specially for this film using a selection of antique and custom-made lenses.
As a native of Detroit, opportunities for creative excellence were prevalent throughout Maurice Draughn’s formative years. The musical heritage of his family and the artistic community in Detroit continues to inspire him as an artist and composer. It is this inspiration that informs Draughn’s writing whenever he composes. Being an active performer has allowed him to collaborate with various artists, from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra to Stevie Wonder. Through these collaborations, Draughn has received commissions from various artists, ensembles, and organizations.
Harlem Fragments
Director: Cameron Tyler Carr
Country: United States, Running Time: 17 min
An Afro-futurist scrapbook storytelling of a Harlem Black family’s beautiful destruction during the 2008 recession. A natural disaster so mesmerizing you can’t look away from the tragedy. Based on true events.
Harlem Blues
Director: Kia C. Folsom
Country: United State, Running Time: 17 min
“Harlem Blues” is a poignant drama following Kaycee, a woman grappling with the aftermath of a shattered engagement as she navigates the vibrant streets of Harlem, finding solace in friendship while confronting the ghosts of her past. Through moments of introspection and unexpected encounters, Kaycee learns to embrace the possibility of a fresh start, discovering resilience, redemption, and the enduring power of love amidst the rich tapestry of life in the city.
Feeling
Director: Hilton Goode
Country: US, Running Time: 28 mins
On the night of Élysée Jackson’s 23rd birthday, her old friend Bento Benson, in a bid to make the occasion unforgettable, declares they must listen to at least one of her prized records while under the influence. What unfolds for the pair is the creation of a shared realm-crafted embrace, where the world around them begins to fade away, leaving room for their relationship to blossom on this single unforgettable night.
STANLEY NELSON
Stanley Nelson [he/him] is the foremost chronicler of the African American experience working in nonfiction film today. His documentary films, many of which have aired on PBS, combine compelling narratives with rich and deeply researched historical detail, shining new light on both familiar and under-explored aspects of the American past. A MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, Nelson was awarded a Peabody for his body of work in 2016. He has received numerous honors over the course of his career, including the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts Sciences. In 2013, President Barack Obama presented Nelson with the National Medal in the Humanities.
Nelson’s latest documentaries include Sound of the Police, for ABC News Studios/Hulu, and Harriet Tubman: Visions of Freedom and Becoming Frederick Douglass for PBS. His previous documentary Attica, for SHOWTIME Documentary Films, was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 94th Academy Awards® and earned him the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary. In 2021, Nelson also directed the feature film Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy for Netflix, which was a 2022 duPont-Columbia Awards Finalist, and Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre, with co-director Marco Williams, for the HISTORY Channel, which was nominated for three Primetime Emmy® Awards.
Nelson’s feature for American Masters, Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, a definitive look at the life and career of the iconic Miles Davis, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019, marking his tenth premiere at the prestigious festival – the most premieres of any documentary filmmaker. The film also won two Emmy® Awards at the 42nd Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards and was nominated for Best Music Film at the 62nd Grammy Awards. Nelson’s film The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2016) is the first comprehensive, feature-length documentary portrait of that iconic organization, as well as a timely look at an earlier phase of Black activism around police violence in African American communities. The film won the 2016 NAACP Image Award.
Two of Nelson’s previous films, Freedom Riders (2010, three Primetime Emmy® Awards and included in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress) and Freedom Summer (2014, Peabody Award), took a fresh look at multiracial efforts to register Black voters and desegregate public transportation facilities in the Jim Crow South, critical events in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Nelson’s 2003 film The Murder of Emmett Till, about the brutal killing of fourteen-year-old Till in Mississippi in 1955, uncovered new eyewitnesses to the crime and helped prompt the U.S. Department of Justice to reopen the case.
Other notable Nelson films include the Emmy nominated The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords (1999), a sweeping portrait of over a century of independent Black journalism; Two Dollars and a Dream (1989), a biography of Madame C.J. Walker, the first self-made African American woman millionaire; Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple (2006, Tribeca Film Festival Special Jury Prize), a riveting account of how cult leader Jim Jones led more than 900 followers to commit mass suicide in a remote corner of northwestern Guyana in 1978; Marcus Garvey: Look for Me in the Whirlwind (2000, Sundance Premiere) a moving account of the life of the controversial early twentieth century Black nationalist; and A Place of Our Own (2004, Sundance Premiere), a remarkable and revealing portrait of the upper middle class African American resort community of Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard, as well as a very personal portrait of Nelson’s sometimes difficult relationship with his father.
In 2000, Nelson, along with his wife, Marcia A. Smith, founded Firelight Media, a non-profit organization whose flagship Documentary Lab has helped to launch the careers of more than 100 nonfiction filmmakers of color, as well as Firelight Films, a production company that produces nonfiction films by and about communities of color.
VERNON REID
If you’ve followed the beats of his half-century career, you’ll know Vernon Reid as an artist who paints in every colour. Depending on the era you dive into and the album on your turntable, you’ll find the New York polymath pinballing between jazz, metal, punk, funk, electronica and hip-hop, cutting heads with collaborators as eclectic as Mick Jagger and Public Enemy, endlessly shedding his skin yet always speaking his truth.
Globally celebrated as a giant of electric guitar (he was recently hailed by Rolling Stone amongst the top 50 players of all-time), Reid’s Grammy Award-winning records with alt-rock trailblazers, Living Colour, still sound as fresh and fierce as when Cult Of Personality hijacked the Billboard chart in the late-’80s. But to take the pulse of the zeitgeist as he sees it – and hear his fearless musicality in microcosm – you need only drop the needle on his acclaimed new solo album, Hoodoo Telemetry, released October 3, 2025 on Artone / The Players Club Records.
“Hoodoo Telemetry,” considers the 66-year-old of this kaleidoscopic 14-track opus, “is like a piece of my all-over-the-place mind. It took me a while to start this record because I was thinking about what I wanted to do next, managing my time with all my other projects. I was also in different spaces with these songs: some are new, others are reclamations of material from a long time ago. But suddenly, I found the focus and it was very clear to me: I gotta do this now.”
Hoodoo Telemetry isn’t a linear piece, but a thrillingly tangled tapestry of genres, collaborators and material from different time periods. Its energy and chaos seems to reflect and challenge what Reid considers the “tumultuous” socio-political backdrop it will soundtrack. “Everything I do,” he points out, “is a protest of one kind or another.”
It’s true: Reid never took the path of least resistance. Born in London on 22 August 1958, to music-loving parents of the Windrush generation, within a year the family had upped and moved to New York City. He remembers the seismic shift of hearing The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 and the moment a guitar called to him. “I heard Carlos Santana’s Black Magic Woman and it entranced me.”
Yet Reid’s cultural awakening sprawled in every direction. “I loved music at a cellular level. And all kinds of music. James Brown, Hendrix, Band of Gypsys, Sly And The Family Stone, Cream. The psychedelic movement. Miles Davis going electric, y’know, Live-Evil and Bitches Brew. All of those people that went to different places and did different things with their music. I liked the idea of a musician risking it all to change.”
(photo by Justin Borucki)
KARA YOUNG
Kara Young made history as the first Black performer to win two back-to-back Tony Awards and to be nominated four times in a row. Kara was most recently seen starring in PURPOSE on Broadway, which in addition to a Tony, earned her a Drama Desk award as well as Drama League and Outer Critics Circle Nominations. She previously starred on Broadway as ‘Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins’ in PURLIE VICTORIOUS: A NON-CONFEDERATE ROMP THROUGH THE COTTON PATCH, for which she won a 2024 Tony Award in the category of Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play. Additionally, her performance in PURLIE VICTORIOUS earned her an Outer Critics Circle Award, Drama Desk Award and Drama League nomination.
Young was most recently seen starring in MCC Theater’s TABLE 17, which earned her a 2025 Lucille Lortell Award for Outstanding Lead Performer in a Play. In 2022, she made her Broadway debut in Lynn Nottage’s CLYDE’S, for which she earned a Theatre World Award and her first Tony nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play. In 2023, she was Tony nominated for her work in COST OF LIVING and won an Obie Award for her performance in the Classical Theatre of Harlem’s production of TWELFTH NIGHT.
Kara can next be seen co-starring in the feature film IS GOD IS. She can also be seen in Boots Riley’s I’M A VIRGO for Prime Video, which earned her an Indie Spirit Nomination for Best Breakthrough Performance. She appeared in HBO Max’s THE STAIRCASE as well as Netflix’s THE PUNISHER and starred in the winning Sundance Short, HAIR WOLF. Kara also starred in MCC Theater’s ALL THE NATALIE PORTMANS, for which she received a Lucille Lortel Award Nomination. Her other stage credits include HALFWAY BITCHES GO STRAIGHT TO HEAVEN, NEW ENGLANDERS, REVOLVING CYCLES TRULY AND STEADILY ROLL’D and PRETTY HUNGER.