The Thomas Edison Film Festival and Lewis Center for the Arts honor Black History Month with Themes and Journeys of Artists and Filmmakers in New Jersey. This film screening and panel of top, award-winning filmmakers and poets living and working in New Jersey will include a premiere screening of three award-winning films from the Thomas Edison Film Festival collection produced, directed and/or performed by the five panel members. The films include How Do You Raise a Black Child? by writer/director Seyi Peter-Thomas in collaboration with poet Cortney Lamar Charleston; The Bravest, the Boldest by award-winning filmmaker Moon Molson, professor of film at Princeton; and Freedom for Freedom by Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Yuri Alves featuring poet Bimpé Fageyinbo. A panel discussion with the filmmakers facilitated by festival director Jane Steuerwald will follow the screening.
In addition to the support provided for the 2025 season by the Lewis Center for the Arts, the Thomas Edison Film Festival receives support from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts; the Charles Edison Fund – Edison Innovation Foundation; the Hudson County Office of Cultural and Heritage Affairs and Tourism; the Hoboken Historical Museum; Big Sky Edit; APM Music; Sonic Union; Lowenstein Sandler, LLP; the NBA; NJ Motion Picture and Television Commission; Rowan University; Fairleigh Dickinson University; and Digital Film East Brunswick Magnet School.
About the Films
The three films being screened include:
Film still from “How Do You Raise a Black Child? by Seyi Peter-Thomas
How Do You Raise a Black Child?
4 min. by Seyi Peter-Thomas, South Orange, NJ
This short film adaptation of Cortney Lamar Charleston’s poem “How Do You Raise a Black Child?” paints an important portrait of everyday life for a young black man growing up in America. It is an impressionistic piece that explores the delicate balance parents must strike as they steer their children toward adulthood.
Film still from “The Bravest, the Boldest” by Moon Molson
The Bravest, the Boldest
17 min. by Moon Molson, Brooklyn, NY
Two Army Casualty Notification Officers arrive at the Harlem projects to deliver Sayeeda Porter some news about her son serving in the war in the Middle East. Whatever it is they have to say, Sayeeda is trying not to hear it.
Film still from “Freedom for Freedom” by Yuri Alves
Freedom for Freedom
4 min. by Yuri Alves, Newark, NJ
Poet Bimpé Fageyinbo delivers a powerful ode to the memory and spirit of Harriet Tubman, while evoking the urgency of real freedom for Black people, then and now.
Admission & Details
The lecture is free and open to the public; no advance tickets or registration required.
Directions
Get directions to the James Stewart Film Theater, located on the first floor at 185 Nassau Street.
Accessibility
The James Stewart Film Theater is an accessible venue. Visit our Venues and Studios section for accessibility information at our various locations. Guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at 609-258-5262 or email LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week in advance of the event date.
About the Guest Filmmakers & Speakers
Seyi Peter-Thomas
Seyi Peter-Thomas is a writer/director who has directed award-winning commercial campaigns for Visa, Hilton, Honda, and McDonalds. Seyi began his career by directing some of MTV’s iconic on-air promos, and his public service annoucement campaigns for MTV Safer Sex Initiative and Nickelodeon’s Black History Month have each garnered Daytime Emmys. Seyi’s poignant short film, How Do you Raise a Black Child? has the distinction of being preserved in MoMa’s permanent Film and Television archive. Seyi is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and also the 2022 Director’s Guild of America TV Mentorship Program. He lives and works in New Jersey.
Cortney Lamar Charleston
Cortney Lamar Charleston is the author of three full-length poetry collections: Telepathologies (Saturnalia Books, 2017); Doppelgangbanger (Haymarket Books, 2021); and It’s Important I Remember (Curbstone Books/Northwestern University Press, forthcoming). He was awarded a 2017 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and he has also received fellowships from Cave Canem and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Winner of a Pushcart Prize, his poems have appeared in Poetry, The Nation, The Atlantic, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere.
Moon Molson
Moon Molson’s short films Pop Foul, Crazy Beats Strong Every Time, and The Bravest, the Boldest, all premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. His work has screened at over 250 international film festivals and has since received more than 100 awards worldwide, including the Grand Jury Prizes at Palm Springs, South by Southwest (SXSW), and the Student Academy Awards. He has attended the 2008 Sundance Screenwriters & Directors Labs, the 2008 Film Independent (FIND) Directors Labs, the 2015 Warner Brothers Television Directors’ Workshop, and 2016 FOX Global Directors Initiative as a Fox Director Fellow. Molson was named a 2017 Pew Foundation Fellow, a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow in Film-Video, and was one of Filmmaker Magazine‘s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in Summer 2007. He has received grants from The Jerome Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and the Sundance Institute.
Yuri Alves
Yuri Alves is an award-winning filmmaker born to Portuguese parents in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Alves was raised in Newark, New Jersey, inside the Ironbound district, home to one of the largest Portuguese-speaking communities in the U.S. Yuri directed two prime-time dramatic series, starring Diogo Morgado (The Bible), Tempo Final (2010) and Filha de Lei (2017), both to critical acclaim. He directed his first American series RZR (nominated for a prime-time Emmy in 2024) starring David Bianchi alongside a cast that includes Hollywood veterans Danny Trejo, Bafta nominee Mena Suvari, and Emmy winner Richard Cabral. Alves’s short films have been screened at prestigious festivals such as Raindance, HBO NY Latino Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, Thomas Edison Film Festival, Lincoln Center, and Tribeca Cinemas. He won his second Emmy in 2022 for Emerge, a live concert film airing on PBS and featuring the world-renowned New Jersey Symphony Orchestra led by Maestra Xian Zhang.
Bimpé Fageyinbo
Bimpé Fageyinbo is a Nigerian artist—a poet, filmmaker, and photographer. Fageyinbo is the author of so maybe that’s the bee’s weakness (2010) and what was me (2017), the first two books of poetry in a continuing memoir series. Her recent collaborative work includes the A Womb of Violet Anthologies, archived in collections such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and Library of Congress. In 2023, Fageyinbo was commissioned to write and perform her poem “Freedom for Freedom” at the historic Harriet Tubman Monument Unveiling ceremony, hosted by Audible and the City of Newark, New Jersey. Adapted into a poetry film, Freedom for Freedom, directed by Yuri Alves and produced by DreamPlay Media, was awarded the 2024 Jury’s Stellar Award at the 43rd Thomas Edison Film Festival. Fageyinbo is a 2024 New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellow and is currently working on a third book of poetry.
