The 20th Oakland International Festival announces first set of screenings Day 6 at The Grand Lake Theater on September 21st, 2022.
The first set of films will kick off at 6:30 p.m. Beginning with the feature film from China, “Promise Through Lifetime”, Directed by Jianhua Yang, “Promise Through Lifetime” tells the story of a mountain village primary school in China, three generations of teachers worked with one shoulder pole to support the poor students. In order to help the children get out of the mountain, the teachers kept their promise and kept themselves in the mountain for the lifetime.
Following Promise Through Lifetime, the short film “White Jesus, Black Problem” will screen.
Directed by Aerick Neal, the story of White Jesus Black Problems begins roughly 270 years ago, when a white indentured servant from Scotland named Elizabeth Gallamore fell in love with an enslaved Black man whose name, like so much else, had been stripped away from him by his captors. The pair lived in the colony of Virginia, where interracial relationships were not only taboo, but legally forbidden, and their romance put their very lives in danger. The same laws that prevented the two from ever marrying, however, also affixed their offspring’s legal status to that of their mother, meaning that after seven years of their own indentured servitude, Gallamore’s children would be granted their freedom, as well. And so the unlikely couple begot a generation of free African-American children, who in turn begot another generation of free African-American children, who in turn begot another generation of free African-American children, on and on down the line until the birth of their great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson, Xavier Amin Dephrepaulezz. Or, as you most likely know him, three-time Grammy winner Fantastic Negrito.
