www.affrm.com<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the first time in over a decade, the Academy Awards nominations featured not a single African American in either the Best Director, Actor, Actress, or Supporting Actor\/Actress categories. The glittering awards ceremony which took place over a week ago, disappointed Black film makers and actors for whom Hollywood has traditionally been a tough place […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-program"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"AFFRM\"](\"http:\/\/rnbphilly.com\/files\/2011\/03\/iwillfollow.jpg\")
For the first time in over a decade, the Academy Awards nominations featured not a single African American in either the Best Director, Actor, Actress, or Supporting Actor\/Actress categories. The glittering awards ceremony which took place over a week ago, disappointed Black film makers and actors for whom Hollywood has traditionally been a tough place to break into. The Directors Guild of America has a 90% white membership, while the Writers Guild has a 94% white membership. In such an atmosphere the challenges to Black film makers and artists remain daunting. However, venues like the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles, are now providing a promising opening for black-themed films. A new feature film by Ava DuVernay called I Will Follow will release this weekend in Los Angeles, and is the first offering from a brand new non-profit group called AFFRM. AFFRM stands for the African American Film Festival Releasing Movement. Writer and Director DuVernay, a veteran of the film industry, is also AFFRM’s Founder. Her film I Will Follow stars Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Omari Hardwick, Blair Underwood, and Beverly Todd. It follows a day in the life of a woman named Maye struck with a personal tragedy and the people in her life who influence her. I Will Follow has been picked as part of the official selection for a number of film festivals already. Roger Ebert said of the the film, “it isn’t sentimental, it isn’t superficial. It is very deeply true.”<\/p>\n