Denton

Denton Black Film Festival gives back to community in 2025

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The Denton Black Film Festival has just wrapped up its 11th year, and it did more than bring good movies to North Texas. Organizers gave back to the community as well.

The festival partnered with Denton ISD and allowed elementary school students to tell their stories through an art and essay competition.

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Students in the fourth and fifth grades submitted original pieces of artwork and an essay, written in either English or Spanish, based on the yearly topic. This year's theme was Resilience.

According to the Denton Black Film Festival, resilience is defined as the ability to bounce back from or adjust to adversity, challenges, or setbacks. It is the heart of endurance, the power of healing, and the strength to rise again, no matter how many times life may knock you down.

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Through the festival, the Annual Adopt-A-School Art and Essay Awards allowed young minds to showcase their interpretations of what resilience means.

This year's festival also offered film screenings, workshops, and classes to help filmmakers and creatives connect and grow.

One of these screenings took place on Jan. 24. The festival hosted a screening of “Our Movement Starts Here,” a film that tells the story of a rural community in the American South that inspired the environmental justice movement and articulated the concept of environmental racism in 1982 by fighting the state of North Carolina's toxic landfill.

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The festival also hosted a Q&A session featuring special guest Patrick A. B. Barnes and moderated by UNT philosophy PhD students.

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According to the Denton Black Film Festival, Barnes is a professional geologist, founder, and CEO of BFA Environmental the largest African-American-owned environmental engineering/scientific consulting and land surveying firm in the Southeast. He is a strong advocate for environmental justice communities and serves or has served on numerous advisory boards dedicated to environmental sustainability in underserved communities, festival representatives said. He is also the founder of Limitless Vistas, a Louisiana-based non-profit environmental workforce development organization that provides entry-level job skills to youth living in EJ communities. He has served as Science/Technical Advisor to numerous communities over the past four decades including Warren County North Carolina, the birthplace of the environmental justice movement.

Other events included panels that highlighted topics that impact communities in North Texas and beyond.

The festival hosted a social justice panel on Jan. 25 that focused on human trafficking.

Panelists included Bianca Davis, the CEO of New Friends New Life, a nonprofit agency in Dallas that empowers women and girls who have been trafficked or exploited. The panel also featured Nikki Lockett, Adult Case Manager from New Friends New Life, as well as representatives from media and law enforcement organizations who discussed grass-roots solutions to help address human trafficking.

“I tell stories that illuminate human connection, inspiring people to care for each other more deeply," Davis said.

Following the panel, the festival offered two ticketed film screenings at the Campus Theatre: “Still I Rise,” a documentary, and "Mister Gates," a narrative feature. The directors of both films were available for Q&A.

Even though the Denton Black Film Festival has concluded for the year, fans and community members alike can still take part in sharing the stories of the Black community.

Next year's festival is nearly a year away, but they hold community screenings all year long.

NBC 5 and Telemundo 39 are proud sponsors of the Denton Black Film Festival.

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