National Museum of African American History and Culture and ABFF To Screen Works of Legendary Filmmaker Madeline Anderson in Miami

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture will screen two seminal works by pioneering filmmaker Madeline Anderson and premiere a clip from a Smithsonian-produced oral-history interview with Anderson at the 21st American Black Film Festival (ABFF).  Following the screening, Anderson will sit with Rhea Combs, the museum’s curator of photography and film, for an in-depth discussion of Anderson’s work and career.

Held at the Miami Beach Cinematheque Thursday, June 15, at 2 p.m., the program will take place during the ABFF festival that runs from June 14–18 in Miami.

Anderson is credited as being the first black employee at the New York-based television station WNET, the first black woman to produce and direct a televised documentary film, the first black woman to produce and direct a syndicated television series and one of the first black women to join the film editor’s union. Anderson became the in-house producer/director for Sesame Street and The Electric Company for the Children’s Television Workshop. During the early 1970s, she helped create WHMM-TV (now WHUT-TV) at Howard University.

Integration Report 1 (1960) chronicles the events around the country leading up to the first attempt at a march on Washington. I Am Somebody (1970) tells the story of 400 African American women who, as hospital workers in Charleston, S.C., went on strike in 1969 to demand fair pay and unionization. After confrontations with the National Guard and state government, the women won the support of Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow, Coretta Scott King, and civil rights activists Ralph Abernathy and Andrew Young.

A complete festival schedule and information about purchasing passes, tickets for events, panels and screenings at ABFF are available at http://www.abff.com/festival-passes/.

About the National Museum of African American History and Culture

The National Museum of African American History and Culture opened Sept. 24, 2016, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Occupying a prominent location next to the Washington Monument, the nearly 400,000-square-foot museum is the nation’s largest and most comprehensive cultural destination devoted exclusively to exploring, documenting and showcasing the African American story and its impact on American and world history. For more information about the museum, visit nmaahc.si.edu, follow @NMAAHC on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat—or call Smithsonian information at (202) 633-1000.

About the American Black Film Festival

The American Black Film Festival (ABFF) is an annual event dedicated to showcasing quality film and television content by and about people of African descent. Conceived in 1997, it supports emerging artists to foster a wider range of images, stories and storytellers represented in the entertainment industry. The festival is committed to the belief that black artists and content creators deserve the same opportunities as their mainstream counterparts. Today, the ABFF is recognized as the preeminent pipeline to new black talent, both in front of and behind the camera, and is regarded as one of the leading film festivals in the world. The ABFF is a property of ABFF Ventures, a multifaceted entertainment company specializing in the production of live events, television and digital content.

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