THANKS TO ALL that attended the San Francisco Black Film Festival 14, filmmakers, directors, sponsors and those who love good times and good films.

 
Robert Townsend at Pre-opening

After moving to San Francisco in the 1980s, Ms. Montague started her own public relations firm, representing artists and nonprofit groups like the United Negro College Fund and the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame. Out of the latter came the San Francisco Black Film Festival, which Ms. Montague started in 1998 on a shoestring budget and built into a prime forum for African American filmmakers and for films from around the globe, including Africa, Brazil, Cuba and Europe, that dealt with, as she put it, "a spectrum of subjects from socioeconomics to streetwise urban culture."

Ms. Montague received the Business Woman of the Year Award from the San Francisco Business and Professional Women's Club in 1994, and, with the late Faith Fancher, was a founding member of Friends of Faith, an organization that educates women about breast cancer.

She was always cooking up something, whether it was a charity fundraiser or the mail-order video business she started in 1989 to provide films by and about black people. Her last effort was the big Inaugural West celebration for President Obama that she co-produced at San Francisco's Metreon on Jan. 20. As usual, she packed the place. (original article here SFGate)

We are offering a new award this year which is coined, "THE AVE' MONTAGUE AWARD" which is the film that most closely captures the mission statement of the SFBFF. The first winner of this award is ENGLEWOOD (The Growing Pains in Chicago) by. William L. Cochran TRAILER HERE

Filmmaker Biography

William L. Cochran is an Actor/Filmmaker born and raised on the Southside of Chicago, Illinois. He attended Percy L. Julian High School where he studied Radio/Television courses. Shortly after leaving Julian High School, he attended East West University.

William has always been labeled as funny and said to have a lot of character, these compliments are what let him into acting.

Since I always had the ability to entertain people, I began to think that the acting profession did not seem like a bad idea. - William Cochran

William Cochran William enrolled in Act One Studios, a school for performing arts located in downtown Chicago. While acting in class, the reactions of his peers and instructors of amazement made William realize that he had a talent that needed to be exposed to the industry. In 2009, William started acting in local short films and performing in local stage plays, but he felt a longing for wanting to produce and direct.

Although acting was what William sought out to do, he had a desire to go further and create his own films. In 2010 he co-wrote, directed, and starred in a 5min short entitled, "Word of Mouth." This production was written to compliment a poem by a spoken word artist. In this short William intended to convey how important words of encouragement, constructive criticism, and compliments could greatly impact someone's life.

William produced the feature film entitled, Englewood (The Growing Pains In Chicago). In 2009 & 2010 Chicago experienced high numbers of violence and is often considered murder capital of the United States. Having said that, people could only imagine how growing up in inner city Chicago can often be an unbearable and frightening way of life.

I made this movie for all the people who have the luxury of living on the outside of the Englewood neighborhood. They can get a better understanding of the mentality these young men and women embody, rather than only the news media perception of it. - William Cochran

Englewood (The Growing Pains In Chicago) movie examines the lives of three young men, living in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago, united by the desire to survive senior year, but divided by their ways of life. William formed Forever Foreign Films LLC in 2009. He aspires to tell the stories about certain aspects of life and society that are usually overlooked or misunderstood. He wants to build a film company that will inspire, entertain and enlighten all of our fans and supporters.

MORE INFO HERE