Acclaimed Film Director Barnette Features Up-tempo Mini Docs at Pan-African Film Festival. 

Billed as CLIFF NOTES FOR THE DIGITAL AGE, Black History Mini Docs using stylish and rhythmic cinematic storytelling constructed specifically for today’s audiences with quick attention spans. 

Los Angeles CA - February 2, 2015

Legendary Producer, Director, and Filmmaker Neema Barnette (Civil Brand, Women thou Art Loosed: On The 7th Day, The Cosby Show) will be bringing her original documentary series “Black History Mini Docs” (blackhistorymindocs.com) back to the Pan African International Film Festival for the second straight year.

Black History Mini Docs (BHMD) are 90 second video vignettes, using historical footage and a compelling soundtrack to convey the little-known stories of great historical figures in Black History. “If you have 90 seconds then you have enough time to watch Black History Mini Docs” says Barnette, who teamed up with her husband Reed R. McCants (Cuttin’ Da Mustard), also an award winning filmmaker, to chronicle the many contributions and achievements of Black Americans comprehensively. 

The Black History Mini Docs series features the stories of great heroes and she-roes as Nelson Mandela, Ida B Wells, Thurgood Marshall, Frederick Douglass, Althea Gibson, Nina Simone and James Baldwin. As a crash course in Black history, Barnette’s Black History Mini Docs are a great way to educate young and old by meeting the high expectations of today’s digital consumer through the use of quick cuts and up-tempo cinematic pacing often found in blockbuster movie trailers. 

“I was concerned that upcoming generations were losing sight of African American historical contributions.” says Barnette. “Let’s be truthful, the Internet has caused so many of us to have shorter attention spans. But what if we were able to administer historical information in the same rapid, appealing way that TMZ, Bossip and other popular web destinations do with current news? Black History Mini Docs becomes an amazing tool to both educate and entertain in a manner that adolescents and millennials are accustomed to and familiar.”

A different Mini Doc will be shown before the screening of each festival film, including the premiere of Mini Docs on the life of Fannie Lou Hamer, Garrett Morgan, Diana Sands and more. The PAFF Festival runs February 5th through the 16th at the Rave Cinemas, Los Angeles CA. 

About PAFF

The Pan-African Film Festival is the quintessential Black festival and has premiered a host of top black films including Think Like a Man, Free Angela and All Political Prisoners, Love & Basketball, Woman Thou Art Loosed: On the 7th Day and many more. Established in 1992, The Pan African Film Festival is dedicated to the promotion of cultural understanding among peoples of African descent. PAFF collaborates with other festivals from around the world, giving them an audience that is truly international.  Not only are they the largest and most prestigious black film festival in America but PAFF-LA is the largest Black History Month event in the US during the month of February. 

For more information about the festival visit: http://www.paff.org/

Information BHMD visit:  blackhistoryminidocs.com

For more information visit: http://facebook.com/blackhistoryminidocs 

Call the Open Door Arts-in-Education Project at 914-424-6092 for booking. 

CONTACT:     

MEDIA CONTACT

AC Green

Tel: 646-410-0826

Email: info@blackhistoryminidocs.com 

BHMD MICRO DOCS are a even faster way to get historical facts about some of the greatest heroes to have ever walked on this earth. 

BHMD MICRO DOCS - DAISY BATES

Daisy Lee Gatson Bates (November 11, 1914 – November 4, 1999) was an American civil rights activist, publisher, journalist, and lecturer who played a leading role in the Little Rock Integration Crisis of 1957.

• WATCH NOW

Filmmaker an EP of BHMD, Neema Barnette talks about her experiences working on what is now being hailed, a film classic, her star-studded women's prison movie “Civil Brand”.

Fifteen years ago I began the journey of making Civil Brand! It started with an offer to direct. Wanting to make a change and really tell a more honest story of young Black women in prison, I asked writer Joyce Renee Lewis to come aboard for a re- write. We decided to make the characters different, internal warriors who would fight against a prison system which parallels modern slavery & we named the prison Whitehead Correctional Institute after a plantation. 

A line in the original script stated that a corporation came to visit the prison. Curious, I went online typing "prison as business" and that's when the story began to take shape! We found out that The Correction Corporation of America was number four on the New York Stock Exchange. Prison was big business!

We re-structured the story to highlight slave labor in the prison system and decided to have the inmates fight back!

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