The resonant boom of drums echoed through the streets of downtown Oakland, signaling the start of biennial Black Arts Movement Film Festival, or BAM Film Fest.
The festival kicks off the Black Arts Movement Business District’s bi-annual, multi-venue event series.
The ceremonial summoning of ancestors grounded the month-long festival’s theme of inheritance and survival. For filmmaker and BAM Film Fest co-founder Shaka Jamal Redmond, the ritual embodied the spiritual heart of the weekend, a way to “pull in the ancestors for support with the work that we were going to be doing.” The event takes place amid recent cuts to the City of Oakland’s arts budget and widespread federal funding cuts…