Roger Ross Williams Receives Impact Award From Miami Film Festival

For documentary films director, there is no more compliment than hearing words, “Your movie has made an effect.”

For this reason, it was especially important this week for an Oscar -winning director Roger Ross Williams To earn an impact prize from Miami Film Festival.

“This means a lot now on this day and this era when all I know and spent under attack,” Williams says to the deadline. “Especially documentaries under the attack. We are no longer until we see” documentary influence “anymore. We see them in festivals, but they have not been sold. Buyers are no longer really interested in the influence of documentaries anymore. Therefore, it is especially important for me to give me the Miami Film Festival this award at this time in history.”

View the award, presented by MFF CEO James WalliIt came after the Williams 2023 feature Seal – One of the rare documentaries that will be supported by the sign, in this case Netflix (will Netflix get that day, have it been released now, in America Trump? Virtual for another day). The film, based on the book of the doctor Ibram x. KendiHe examines structural racism in the United States extending by the country to this day.

I think Seal “I think it is especially important, but I also think it is a kind of inspiration for people who move around what is going on in the world because this is not new,” says Williams. We are always the people who are fighting for democracy, fighting for human rights, and in Sealed You see when we have large relapses and historical setbacks that have occurred over and over again and again for black Americans, there is resistance. We were inspired, excited, then there [backlash]And the pendulum swings in the other direction. Therefore, we are looking at the violent reaction now from Obama years, Biden years, Kamal Harris. We look at the pendulum swing, but there will be resistance to that. “

“This is not always, what happens. And when a wonderful person like IBRAM X. Kendi, a historian, can look at the biggest date – that’s great in seeing the movie, you see it in a new light. This happened before, we fought, and we won.

Seal She was included in the Academy Awards list and received an EMMY Primetime Award. It is a rider with the Williams Documentary Film series 2023 Project 1619Based on the New York Times series, Nikle Hannah-Jones. In reality, Sealed Contains a large amount of Williams Canon.

“No one in America is more flexible than black Americans. This is what Apollo It was, that’s what 1619 It is about. Sealand High on the pigAll of this is observed, “The topic of my work is black flexibility, and this will continue in future work and will remain the reality of blacks. There is no one more flexible than us. No one has passed more than we went through – it was dragged here against our will, through the middle path and slavery, and the culture flourished and the culture in several ways in America. We have a president, music that defines culture, jazz and rap, R&b, and dance. Black culture and black work.

SealThe National Book Award winner was published in 2016, the year in which Donald Trump was elected president the first time. Now, in his second term of his office, Trump has made a top priority in dismantling diversity, fairness and integration programs – and in fact, mentioning diversity or African American achievements from anything that falls within the jurisdiction of the federal or benefiting from government financing. According to New York Times report On Friday, a little more than a week ago, the United States Marine Academy in Annapolis, MD Purged Books from the Holocaust libraries, sex, LGBTQ, and Maya Angeou’s memoirs I know why the beloved bird singsOf the hundreds of other books. But she left Adolf Hitler not touching her Min Campf And other books with racist ideology.

According to the report, “Political appointments in the Ministry of Naval Command decided which books to be removed.”

Likewise, the Trump administration is achieved in Yale, MIT, and dozens of colleges and other universities for “alleged racial discrimination”, according to Reports in luck And other news means, “as part of President Donald Trump’s campaign to end diversity, stock and integration programs.”

Last week, Williams traveled to Yale to examine Seal It is hosted by the inclusion and diversity office at the university.

“They told us,” Well, perhaps one of the last events because diversity and inclusion is being renamed, “Williams is participating.” Even the American Afro Center, which has been there for 55 years, is threatened with the loss of its area and its closure. “

Williams joined a question and answer at Yale University Sealed Producers Alyssa Payne and David Tig; Dr. Kennedy participated through enlargement. “Questions [from the students] Was everything, could you give us words of encouragement to continue the fighting? Williams notice, how do we find the power to continue when all of this happens to us? You will continue to suffer. But if you go out and struggle and do something, terrible things maybe It happens to you. Therefore, they will happen regardless. If you are fighting, it may make a difference and create the change. You can sit and let everything happen to you and do nothing, or you can go out and fight and let all of you happen to you and may have a difference … “You have been inspired a lot.”

Williams says he neither is he nor the American -African community as a whole, he gave up hope.

“We will continue to fight to support the ideals of democracy,” he says. “But we will also continue in our lives, black joy, positive things and society.”