Every Lily Bit

What to expect from the second annual Black Lily Film & Music Festival

by Mary Wilson

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

It's no secret that women are underrepresented in the film industry. Few blockbuster hits have women leads, and female directors are even scarcer. That's just one of the things that spurred independent filmmaker Maori Karmael Holmes to approach the folks from Black Lily: A Women in Music Series — a well-established series featuring female musicians — and ask them to add film to their bill in 2006.

Holmes had just made Scene Not Heard, a doc about women in the Philly hip-hop scene, and Black Lily (which held weekly events in Philadelphia from 2000 to 2005) had played a central part in it. But it wasn't until she began to screen the film that she truly realized its importance.

"I enjoyed the women's festivals the most," she says. "I saw a parallel between the challenges women face in film to those in music."

The first Black Lily Film & Music Festival took place last year; this time around, the lineup at the International House looks even stronger.

Highlights include Friday night's east coast première of Trouble the Water (pictured), the 2008 Sundance Grand Jury prize-winning film directed by longtime Michael Moore collaborators Tia Lessin and Carl Deal. The film tells the story of New Orleans resident Kimberly Rivers Roberts and her husband, as they struggle to survive the onset and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Roberts, a resident of the 9th Ward, had purchased a $20 video camera a week before the storm hit. When the levees broke, she and her family were forced to take shelter in the attic of their house. She keeps the camera rolling as they call 911 for help (and are denied) and get rescued by a heroic neighbor. We later follow them as they fight to rebuild what they've lost.

Karen Gehres' Begging Naked also features a woman dispossessed, this time in Mayor Giuliani's New York. For nine years, Gehres videotaped the life of sex worker and artist Elise Hill, and the result is a sensitive and honest account of her struggle with addiction and unemployment.

Also notable are Stephanie Black's Africa Unite, about Bob Marley's family reunion in Ethiopia, and Ava DuVernay's This Is the Life, which explores the underground L.A. hip-hop scene in the early 1990s. There are all kinds of stories out there, and as this festival proves, all kinds of people can tell them.

(m_wilson@citypaper.net)

Thu.-Sun., May 1-4, $5-$7, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-387-5125, blacklilyfilm.org.