September 29, 2018 IDA Keynote Presentation Transcript Michèle Stephenson I want to thank Simon Kilmurry, Claire Aguilar and the entire IDA team for inviting me to share with you my journey in filmmaking and working in immersive media. I am taking this opportunity to share my personal thoughts on the field. I am a non-fiction …
by Troy-Jeffrey Allen How does BPM’s mission relate to something like blerd culture? It starts with freedom of expression … Before the millennium, the life of a sci-fi/fantasy fan was fairly lonely. Remember, this was pre-Internet, so geekery was largely a solitary activity – just you and your novel/comic book/manga/film – indulged to support an …
The Webby Award-nominated PBS Online Film Festival returns for the seventh year, July 16-27, 2018, featuring 25 short-form independent films from multiple public media partners and PBS member stations. Heroes of Color, the highly acclaimed series of short animated videos highlighting the contributions of people of color in world history is among those featured in this year’s festival. …
By Denise A. Greene “We’re not a genre.” This clear, emphatic message — featured in a recent video circulating via social media — asserts a core tenet of BPM’s 360 Incubator+ program: that Black content creators are more than a passing fad. BPM ‘s 360 Incubator+ program exists to ensure Black content creators get …
As part of our efforts to educate our community about virtual reality and other emerging forms of storytelling, Black Public Media will occasionally profile someone working in the emerging technology industry. That person could be an artist, a filmmaker, an educator, an executive, or a student. In this edition, we feature excerpts from a conversation …
What does it mean to be Black and a woman? Can either experience be distilled into a computer program? Meet BINA48, a social android that runs on an artificial intelligence (AI) program. Since being activated in 2010, the robot has taken two college courses and rung the bell of the New York Stock Exchange. It continues to machine-learn from its interactions with humans and the internet.
BINA48 is based on a composite of several people, including Bina Aspen, the African-American co-founder and vice president of the Terasem Movement Foundation. The foundation runs the LifeNaut Project, a social experiment focused on saving a person’s memories, values, and beliefs in a digital file (dubbed a “mindfile”). Terasem’s long-term goal is figuring out how to download a mindfile into a biological, mechanical, or digital form or into a yet-to-be-invented mashup of all three.
The 9 most important things to know about Ghana highlife music Afropop Season X ’s fourth episode, Ten Days in Africa, offers an insightful and humorous look at filmmaker Regi Allen’s journey to West Africa. Allen, an Emmy Award-winning African-American producer, editor, and media design artist, travels with a group of African-American companions all seeking …
Amazing black artists, writers, and musicians under 30 AfroPoP X has arrived, and the second episode features three short films including KoJo, the amazing story of Kojo Odu Roney. This short documentary takes viewers inside the gifted 12-year-old jazz drummer’s world, sharing Kojo’s thoughts on his work, the state of jazz, and the influence of …
7 famous African American dancers and where to watch them The long-awaited tenth season of Afropop has, at last, come to Black Public Media. The second episode of the season, a three-part shorts program, finishes up with the short film He Who Dances On Wood. In this episode, viewers will become acquainted with New Yorker …
Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes, Donald Trump, Bill O’Reilly, Harvey Weinstein, Louis C.K., Roy Moore, Mike Oreskes, Al Franken, Charlie Rose, Kevin Spacey, John Conyers, Matt Lauer and Garrison Keillor. All recent inductees to an ignominious hall of fame. This year has been exasperating on so many levels, but the gathering flood of stories about successful men sexually harassing …