{"id":154,"date":"2016-09-20T11:23:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-20T15:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2016\/09\/20\/the-toronto-film-festival-had-its-blackest-edition-ever\/"},"modified":"2016-09-20T11:23:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-20T15:23:00","slug":"the-toronto-film-festival-had-its-blackest-edition-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2016\/09\/20\/the-toronto-film-festival-had-its-blackest-edition-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"The Toronto Film Festival had &#8220;its blackest edition ever&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/codeswitch\/2016\/09\/19\/494627730\/a-breakthrough-showcase-for-black-filmmaking-at-the-toronto-film-festival\" style=\"margin-left: 1em;margin-right: 1em\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"225\" src=\"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-nPwNrhF7suE\/V-FT1eyZLVI\/AAAAAAAACmA\/MA62AWhHfVstFFMhNkqMvvwAnzE9NPoywCLcB\/s400\/katwe.jpg\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>As we saw at this weekend&#8217;s Emmy Awards, we&#8217;re finally seeing what happens when diversity in film goes from being a challenge to an asset. Diversity expands the possibilities of storytelling and filmmaking, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/codeswitch\/2016\/09\/19\/494627730\/a-breakthrough-showcase-for-black-filmmaking-at-the-toronto-film-festival\"><i>NPR<\/i> saw that in effect at this year&#8217;s Toronto International Film Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Normally, the author Bilal Qureshi points out, film festival narratives tend to be dominated by one black film that has to stand in for the entire black experience, as Nate Parker&#8217;s <i>Birth of a Nation<\/i> seemed poised to this year. But this year, TIFF had what Qureshi calls &#8220;its blackest edition ever&#8221; that &#8220;[pushed] back against the idea that Hollywood can only absorb one black story at a time.&#8221; In fact, the filmmakers and organizers have shied away from labeling films &#8220;diverse&#8221; because, with the lineup they&#8217;ve assembled, there&#8217;s no reason to pigeonhole non-white filmmakers.<\/p>\n<p>We hope this becomes the new normal for film festivals. Hopefully we can expand the conversation about diversity in film past just its absence to what it looks like in practice.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As we saw at this weekend&#8217;s Emmy Awards, we&#8217;re finally seeing what happens when diversity in film goes from being a challenge to an asset. Diversity expands the possibilities of storytelling and filmmaking, and NPR saw that in effect at this year&#8217;s Toronto International Film Festival. Normally, the author Bilal Qureshi points out, film festival [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[102,128,212],"class_list":["post-154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-diversity","tag-film-festival","tag-links-of-interest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}