Newark Black Film Festival Collection

The Newark Black Film Festival (NBFF) started in 1974 and stands as the longest-running Black Film Festival in the United States. The festival began as a Black Film Festival organized by Oliver Franklin at the Annenberg Center for Communication, Art, and Sciences in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Gus Henningburg, Executive Director of the Greater Newark Urban Coalition, caught wind of Franklin's festival and proposed that the Newark Museum of Art host Franklin's traveling festival on behalf of the Newark community. However, once Franklin's travling film festival came to a close, the Newark Museum of Art decided to keep the festival going by officially establishing the Newark Black Film festival in its place, with a selection of films from local, traveling, legacy and upcoming Black filmmakers curated and selected by Gloria Hopkins Buck, Rutgers history professor Clement Price and the late James Brown of the Newark Public Library.

Just seven years after the tumult of the 1967 Newark Rebellion, the Newark Black Film Festival served as a cultural safe space for the Black citizens of Newark. It provided, according to Clement Price, "a believable portrait of African-American and African diasporic life." In 1985, the festival began its Paul Robeson awards, which spotlight and reward upcoming Black filmmakers selected by its Selection Committee.

Since its inception, the NBFF has screened over 850 films to over 200,000 attendees and hosted events and premiered the movies of many legends in Black cinema, such as Spike Lee, Danny Glover, Ava DuVernay, Arthur Jafa, and Pam Grier. Fifty-one years and still active, the NBFF, according to its website, "stands as a testament to the enduring power and necessity of Black cinema, committed to inspiring future generations and celebrating the rich tapestry of the Black experience through film."