Actor Aja Naomi King and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter Katori Hall will be honored at this year’s Black Women Film Network Summit.
Scheduled to be held on March 22 with the theme of “Plot Twist: The Art of the Pivot,” the summit will celebrate the impact of Black women on film and television. At the event, King will receive the AccelerateHER award while Hall will receive the StoryTellHER Award. They will join the president at Tyler Perry Studios, Angi Bones, the Global Head of Video Production at Apple Music, Denise Williams Watts, and the Senior VP of Casting at Disney Entertainment, Felicia Joseph, as this year’s honorees.
Along with a ceremony, the Black Women Film Network Summit will offer attendees a series of events, including fireside chats with actors Graham and Sonay Hoffman and panels on funding and marketing.
“These trailblazers embody the spirit of transformation, overcoming challenges and creating or fostering groundbreaking work along the way,” said the BWFN Board Chair and filmmaker, Chiquita Lockley, per a statement. “For almost three decades, BWFN has had boots on the ground, cracking doors open for women in film and TV. As our industry evolves, we’ll continue to find ways to help our members navigate the pivot.”
In the early 1900s, Black women helped establish and pioneer the US cinema industry; along with Eloyce King Patrick Gist, who helped make and produce a series of religious shorts, writer Zora Neale Hurston, Tressie Souders and Maria P. Williams are known for their work producing, directing and at times even acting in movies they made, including Williams’ “The Flames of Wrath” (1923) and Sounder’s “A Woman’s Error” (1922).
Madame E. Toussaint Welcome also helped define the Harlem Renaissance and the silent film industry with her work alongside her husband, Ernest Toussaint Welcome. She is one of the only Black women filmmakers to be recognized for her impact and work in the silent film industry.
Despite all the achievements of Black women in film as they have helped pioneer the genre, Black women are still underrepresented in Hollywood. Per the Representation Project, in 2013, only three percent of leads and co-leads were Black women. Although the statistic nearly doubled in a decade, it is still at 5.6%.
The Black Women Film Network’s main mission is to increase this statistic by providing support to Black women interested in film and helping them carve out their own path into the industry.
