Filmmaking duo uplifts black stories - Spectrum News

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — This year marks eleven years of the Charlotte Black Film Festival. The festival accepted 500 submission from as far away as the U.K. and Egypt.

PJ Barnes and Keith Welborn’s film was one of 100 chosen.

Barnes and Welborn’s friendship can be traced back to high school theater. As they got older, they decided to expand beyond the stage and start their own production company.

“We started the company back in 2009, and we been friends since way before that,” Barnes said.

The duo started acting in front of the camera but shifted their focus to behind the scenes after they described a lack of stories representing people like them.

Now, 12 years after the founding of their company, one of their films will be shown at the Charlotte Black Film festival.

The platform showcases the stories of Black filmmakers. Barnes and Welborn wrote, directed and starred in “All We Got”

“Being from Charlotte, being a Black filmmaker and being accepted by this festival means the world to us. It lets us know we’re on the right track,” Barnes emphasized.

For the first year, the festival created its own streaming platform where all of the films can be viewed 48 hours after their premiere.

The film making duo says, while they see an increase in visibility for Black filmmakers on platforms like HULU and Netflix, there’s still a need to show the versatility of Black lives.

“We’re trying to use our voices to help funnel other Black voices so we can hopefully give them a platform and uplift us all,” Barnes said.

The Charlotte Black Film Festival's founder, Tommy Nichols, says, while the platform is to uplift the voices of Black filmmakers, everyone’s invited and encouraged to come.

"One of the best ways to understand another culture is to hear their stories, so this is the best way for folks to understand African American and African films because we have them from all over the world," Nichols said.

The red carpet award ceremony will take place Saturday, June 26 at the Legacy Event Center in Gastonia.

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