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CCDI at the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival

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Guest post by Sara Augustin, a 2023 Office of Communications Junior Fellow

Of the People: Widening the Path is proud to announce our presence at this year’s Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival (MVFF) which will take place at the Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center in Oak Bluffs, MV next week. Celebrating its 21st year, this annual Film Festival invites promising African American filmmakers from across the world to showcase and discuss their films.

During the event, our very own inaugural Connecting Communities Digital Initiative (CCDI) Scholar in Residence, Maya Cade, will be in conversation with National Film Preservation Board member, Lacey Schwartz Delgado. Will you be in the Martha’s Vineyard area on August 7? We hope you’ll join Maya Cade and Lacey Schwartz Delgado, for their Fireside Chat from 5-6:30 pm in the Vineyard Lounge tent. This event is free and open to the public.

Maya Cade is the creator and curator of the Black Film Archive, an ever-expanding digital archive dedicated to showcasing historically and culturally significant Black films from 1915 to 1979. Her current project at the Library of Congress, Black Film Archive: Tenderness in Black Film, seeks to uncover instances of tenderness in Black film in Library’s collections. Working alongside the Moving Image Research Center, her overall hope is that her scholarship allows the public to “all be awakened by how tenderness in Black film’s past opens pathways for love and connection.”

It is only fitting that she sits down with Lacey Schwartz Delgado. An Emmy-nominated and award-winning producer, writer, director, and outreach strategist, she, too, strives to rewrite normative narratives believing that “storytelling is the one of the most powerful tools we can use to reclaim our sense of self.” Together, they will discuss Cade’s scholarship and her experience with the Of the People: Widening the Path’s Connecting Communities Digital Initiative at the Library of Congress.

This conversation will not be one to miss.

Interested in learning more about CCDI’s other award programs?  Visit the Vineyard Lounge tent again on Friday, Aug. 11 from 2-3 p.m.

Higher Education institutions can apply for CCDI’s Grant for Higher Education opportunity, which supports minority serving higher education institutions as they use the Library’s digital collections to formulate creative and innovative projects that center Black, Indigenous, Hispanic or Latino, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and/or other communities of color in the 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, territories and commonwealths (including Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands).

Are you a library, archive, or museum looking to create a similar project? The CCDI Grant for Libraries, Archives, Museums provides support to US-based non-profit libraries, archives, and museums that use the Library’s digital collections to develop projects that center communities of color.

The application deadline for both opportunities is September 7, 2023 at 2pm EST.

For more on Maya’s work, the Connecting Communities Digital Initiative, and the Of the People program, subscribe to the Of the People blog!

 

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