[Music] Good morning.

That's a clip from Blade, the 1998 Wesley Snipes vampire film that spawned two sequels in a possible reboot in the near future.

It will be one of the major films shown during Milwaukee Films Black History Month celebration.

Joining us is Ty Williams, a programmer for Milwaukee Films Black Lens Strands to tell us about the variety of films that will be coming our way starting February 7th with Centers.

Still gathering award nominations, Blade must have been an easy choice.

Let's talk about Let's talk about that for a while.

Why did you pick Blade?

Yeah.

So, I chose Blades because it is a film that's very near to my heart specifically since it's my favorite form of uh at least my favorite movie with representation of a black character.

I think that Blade is a character that a lot of people today kind of only envision as Wesley Snipes.

And I think that that's very important for fiction and uh black people because a lot of times in fiction we do not see ourselves represented and afroofuturism is all about imagining ourselves in futures.

So, I wanted to showcase Blade as a movie that does that and people may not think it does, but for a lot of folks, you know, we have a very heavy resonance with this movie because it was the template for a lot of uh superhero movies and is one of the main ways that, you know, you could see a black man in a superhero film doing action stuff on screen, at least for the time that it came out.

Yeah, Blade is one of my favorite films, too.

And I I I don't think a lot of people realize how much it inspired all these other Marvel action films that that we see today.

But uh it was like the uh uh start of all of it and it's it's a great film.

Um the festival starts on February 7th, like I said.

And you also uh picked The Last Angel of History.

What is that film about?

Yeah.

So, the last angel of history is a documentary by John Aimfra and it essentially just sort of details what the afroofuturist movement is and how it came to be.

uh giving examples as well such as the music of Detroit techno could be labeled as afroofuturist and they sort of get into the roots of Detroit techno and why it would have that label and just sort of that idea I sort of said in um the blade question that it's about imagined futures and being able to see ourselves in a place where we're typically not imagined because of the means of colonialism and things of that nature.

So it's sort of taking back that power by using fiction to show uh people that there know there's still hope to be around for tomorrow.

Yeah.

You also chose a sunrise space is the place.

Is that a that's like a 1970s film.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah.

So I would say it's the weirdest film on this list.

It's just a uh sunro vehicle where he the plot is that he is a traveling you know spaceman from Oakland with his band and he's trying to stop the explosion of the world by using his music to defeat the evil overlord that is controlling the world.

Uh it's a very out there surrealist movie, but I think it also is a very big pinnacle of what the afroofuturist movement uh looks like or at least has looked like in different forms.

Uh Sunra really does it best.

He really does believe in all these ideas and it shows throughout his music and throughout this film as well.

And you also got uh two documentaries about the black press uh soldiers without stories by Stanley Nelson which looks at the early history of the black press and a documentary that looks at the 50th anniversary of the National Association of Black Journalists.

Can you uh uh talk a little bit about those?

Yeah.

So, on top of the Afroofuturism program that I put together, uh we will have NABJ later in February showcase their documentary describing the association for their 50th anniversary and sort of just giving a a history on it.

And Carved in Stone is also doing uh their film which is you also about journalism and two separate events but you know sort of bridging the gap between afroofuturism and journalism by showing the power of black media in a fictional context as well as the power of black media in reality and how we can use uh journalism to you know further shape change in our world and provide good.

So, I I wanted to have two different angles and I'm just really glad that it worked out so that we could both showcase uh Carved in Stone as well as NABJ and get some good movies like Blade in there as well.

Yeah, the NABJ film is fantastic.

I've been a member of the organization since 1986.

It was fantastic.

Uh can you tell us uh people how they could get more information about uh how to how to see these films?

You can go to mkfilm.org/blacklens org/blacklands and we should have a listing up to locate all of the films that'll be playing in this program as well as the both of the events for the black journalism one the first one for Card and Stone and the second for NABJ they should both be hosted on our website where you could get free tickets for the journalism events and everything else is regularly ticketed such as Blade and the other films that we have but regardless we hope to see everybody come out and enjoy a lot of different media about a lot of different black stories.

Okay.

Again, thanks for joining us, Ty.

Appreciate it.

Yep.

Thank you so much.

[Music]