The flyer for the first annual Malcolm X Film Festival co-curated by Rutgers University-Newark, CMC, Express Newark and The Malcolm X Commemoration Committee to be held on Nov 4 - 5. (Image credit, Zayid Muhammed)
NEWARK, NJ — The Malcolm X Commemoration Committee (MXCC), partnering with the Community Media Center (CMC) at Rutgers University–Newark’s Express Newark, is launching the first annual Malcolm X Human Rights Film Festival on November 6th and 7th. Individuals can attend the event, held at Express Newark, 54 Halsey Street, with doors opening on Friday at 6pm and Saturday at 12pm.
The two-day festival will use Malcolm X as an anchor to display the intersections of social justice, human rights, and community activism through documentary and film. Malcolm X was a prominent civil rights leader, revolutionary, and minister who developed the foundations of the Black Power movement. His advocacy included pushing for Black self-determination, exercising voting rights, and decolonizing Africa, framing civil rights issues as broader human rights ones.
The festival was inspired by several acclaimed documentaries by the late Gil Noble—a long-standing host of the WABC TV show Like It Is—about Malcolm X. Noble’s work includes El Hajj Malik El Shabazz-Malcolm X, which won an Emmy Award.
The festival will feature films addressing social and political issues, including domestic violence, reparations, criminal justice, and other topics related to the legacy of civil rights activism. Among its screenings is the opening film Two Suns of Georgia, directed and produced by filmmaker Hafiz Farid, examining the 1966 meeting between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad.
“I was tired of seeing Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam, left out of history books. He has been demonized, and his brother, Martin Luther King, the other subject of the film, has been sanitized. It was important to take these two figures— one who has been made very soft and passive, and the other who has been denigrated and vilified— to put them in a truer light,” Farid said. “These two brothers loved each other, and that's a different narrative than what has been given.”
As a Newark-based filmmaker, Farid finds that Two Suns of Georgia being screened in Newark carries significant meaning. “Newark has a very unique distinction of being one of the, if not the first, cities where African-American Islam was established and seeded. Having spent over half my life in the Nation of Islam, I had a very personal love and respect for Elijah Muhammad.”
Films screened on Saturday include Norman/Norman, a work on Norman Davy’s— a recent Rutgers alumnus— experiences losing his mother as a result of domestic violence by Gabrielle Blackwood and Charles Warburton; Free Joan Little by filmmaker/journalist Yoruba Richen, a documentary about a Black woman who defended herself against sexual violence by a jail guard in the 1970s; and Justice on Trial by Johanna Fernandez, a film surrounding the wrongful conviction of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a political activist, journalist, and co-founder of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Black Panther Party. Fernandez, who passed this year due to lung cancer, was a historian, prison abolitionist, and associate professor of history and African American studies at Baruch College.
“Film incorporates literature, dialogue, words, writing, music. It incorporates the visual arts through images and symbolism. And that's why it's so powerful. When you start talking about Black film, our gospel, our blues, our hip hop, our rhythm, has contained more of our history than even our history books,” Farid continued.
The Festival is co-curated by Zayid Muhammad, a founding member and press officer for the MXCC who is a longtime resident of Newark, and Yvonne Shirley, the Director of the CMC at Express Newark.
“This film center space was created to be a vehicle to promote and support grassroots creatives and projects— The Festival presents pressing ideas that fit within our mission, and we are honored to be associated with the filmmakers and our immense thanks to Baba Zayid Muhammad for being a leader in this and other grassroots endeavors,” Shirley said.
Admission to the festival is free, with registration preferred. The event is supported by the Office of Violence Protection and Trauma Recovery of the City of Newark and the Rutgers–Newark Alumni Association.
“I hope that out of the festival, we will begin to understand the old adage that content without context is pretext. So as long as we look at these subjects and individuals, we cannot look at them without looking at the context of the overall struggle that they were a part of,” Farid ended.
