Launch of ‘Black Quaker Lives Matter’ film festival

First screening features the first two women of colour to lead Quaker transnational organisations.

Quakers in the US have welcomed a new ‘Black Quaker Lives Matter’ film festival this month, celebrating the lives and contributions of people of colour. The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), which co-sponsors the event, said that the festival aims ‘to educate all about the importance of Quakers of Colour who for too long have remained within the margins of the Society of Friends and the wider world’.

Those celebrated include: Mahala Ashley Dickerson, Howard Thurman, and Bayard Rustin, as well as Friends included in the book Black Fire: African American Quakers on spirituality and human rights. The first screening on 12 February will feature a dialogue between anti-apartheid activist Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, who is the new director of Quaker United Nation Office-Geneva, and Palestinian Friend and AFSC general secretary Joyce Ajlouny, the first two women of colour to lead Quaker transnational organisations.

The festival is co-presented with the DEFA Film Library at UMass Amherst, the Coolidge Corner Theater, and the Goethe-Institut Boston. It will run from 12 February until 9 April.

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