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Heritage Film Festival

Week 4: November 11-17

Premieres Thursday, November 11 at 7 pm EST. In keeping with the Festival's theme, Looking to the Future/Honoring the Past, a broad spectrum of short works by seasoned and emerging filmmakers is showcased. This includes films of all types and genres about immigration, love, friendship, culture, family, food, magic, and much more. Registration opens September 21.

Nandini Sikand / One, if by Land /14 mins*
One, if by Land is an experimental short film that explores the politics of undocumented immigration via land, sea and air.

Keith Young / Historic Spingarn Senior High School / 9mins
A fond farewell to a beloved high school in Prince George's County, Maryland.

Abbesi Akhamie /The Couple Next Door / 12 mins
A single woman's feelings of loneliness begin to stir when an eccentric African couple moves in next door to her.

Tony Buba / The Barber of New Kensington / 13 mins
A ninety-five-year-old barber talks about his life in the once wide-open town of New Kensington.

Joe Brewster / LEARNING TO BREATHE / 10 mins
Young men share how their relationships with racial justice, systemic racism, and social inequity & inequality changed following the death of George Floyd.

Cheryl Petersen / Exposure / 8:30 mins
This student film from B-Roll Media & Arts Inc. focuses on an aspiring teen photographer who finds himself suddenly orphaned. Without family, where will he go next?

Joyce Sherrí / Forever / 14 mins
Set in the 1940s, Forever tells the story of Beau Hayes and Monica Flatts, an interracial couple who have the limits of their love tested when they fall victim to a hate crime.

Vincent Bailleul / Comme un petit air / 4 mins
A despondent woman comes alive when she is reminded of her former life. 

Pat Doyen / Creole Love Call / 3:30 mins*
Skillfully edited from many different home movies, this joyful experimental film demonstrates that love embraces all people and all communities.                

* Q&A with directors Nandini Sikand (One, if by Land), Pat Doyen (Creole Love Call), and moderator Mimi Machado-Luces follows immediately after the screenings.

Nandini Sikand is an anthropologist, filmmaker, writer and dancer. Her award winning films have screened at over one hundred domestic and international film festivals and aired on PBS. She has been awarded grants from The Guggenheim Foundation, The Jerome Foundation, the Center for Asian American Media and is two-time awardee of New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) grant. She is currently working on Visualizing the Thug(gee): Colonialism, Race and Criminality, a study of the discourse and historical throughline of institutional infrastructures of control and forms of carcerality which developed around the “thuggee” from the early 19th century to present day. Sikand is currently an Associate Professor & Chair of an interdisciplinary film and media studies program at Lafayette College, PA. [Photo credit: Imane Halal]

Pat Doyen is a filmmaker, preservationist, and artist who also works in photography and mixed media. Trained as a film archivist, she loves the old, the unknown, the quirky and the unsung. Her filmmaking is a mix of old and new technologies and often very tactile; from hand-processed motion picture film to archival footage in digital projects she is attracted to abstract patterns and details in everyday objects that are often overlooked. She studied film preservation at the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, and film production and media studies at New York University and the State University of New York at Buffalo. She is a National Heritage Responder (a program of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works), specializing in disaster preparedness and recovery. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, and she has taught classes and workshops at Visual Studies Workshop, Louisiana State University, Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Art Center, and others.

Mimi Machado-Luces is an Emmy award-winning producer, writer, and director. Born in Caracas, Venezuela and raised in a multilingual family, her strongest asset is her passion for storytelling in both Español and English. Machado-Luces runs MimiTVA Media - a DC-area consultancy and production firm, specializing in bilingual - cross-cultural - digital, film, broadcast and radio content. Miriam’s range of experience is expansive. During COVID-19 as Senior Producer for Prince George’s Community College television, she produced several virtual programs to replace the in-person content at the College. Miriam and her husband, veteran journalist Barrington Salmon produce a live stream program, Speak Freely with Barrington Salmon. Speak Freely is an after-dinner conversation show featuring a wide array of writers, political strategists, storytellers and artists as guests. Currently she is producing a documentary about her own Afro-Latin family entitled, Trini-Vene Tribe using her father’s treasured 8mm films and in-depth family interviews. Machado-Luces continues her personal work as a director, producer, and educator. She received her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Broadcast Journalism & Business Management from Howard University in Washington, DC. Miriam currently resides in the Washington, DC area with her family.

The 16th annual Heritage Film Festival is a month-long, free event beginning October 21 and ending November 17. Each set of films will be available for viewing for one week, and registrants will be emailed passwords to access the films. Each week's program will be followed by a Q&A with the a director and moderator. 

In keeping with the Heritage Film Festival's tradition of contributing food to the Prince George’s County community, we encourage audience members to donate to or volunteer at their local food pantry.