Celebrating Diverse Voices at the 2021 SCAD Savannah Film Festival

For me the 2021 SCAD Savannah Film Festival, held both online and in person (masks and vaccine mandates strictly enforced) this past October in lovely Savannah, Georgia, was undoubtedly one of the highlights of a pandemic stressful year. Chock-full of movie stars and critics’ darlings, as in years past all invited guests (even low-glitz journos like myself) were provided with gratis gourmet buffets of breakfast, lunch and dinner. (And I do mean gourmet. In fact, the daily five-star-level menus served up on the rooftop and in the restaurant of our charming Drayton Hotel paired nicely with the celebrity wattage.) Less surprising – at least to someone fairly familiar with the film festivals of the Deep South – was the choice to program the Celebrating Diverse Voices Panel, presented in conjunction with Georgia Power. Contrary to popular perception, it’s the liberal fests down south that tend to be the least segregated and most inclusive, at least compared to those up north. (The North never really having been forced to reckon with its own history of racial apartheid the way the South has. Why address insidious redlining when there’s headline-grabbing segregationists like Alabama’s Bull Connor around to unleash some dogs?) And the event’s participants were indeed diverse. On hand at the cozy Gutstein Gallery venue were SAGindie executive director Darrien Gipson, actor and producer Imani Hakim (Dinner Party, Mythic Quest, Everybody Hates Chris), actor, writer and producer Chris Naoki Lee (Dinner Party, Mythic Quest, The Terror), and actor, writer and producer Aizzah Fatima (Americanish, The Good Wife, High Maintenance).

To read all about it visit Global Comment.