The heads of prominent Dallas and North Texas Film Festivals announced their selections for the Top Ten Films of 2017 during WFAA’s Midday at 8 news broadcast today with Edgar Wright’s BABY DRIVER, Jordan Peele’s GET OUT, and Guillermo del Toro’s THE SHAPE OF WATER taking the top three spots among films released in 2017.
Those films are going to make the “Make America Great Again” crowd (which everyone knows is actually code for “Make America White Again”) stop for a moment and reflect and decide that they shouldn’t be tacitly saying, “We’re okay if you eliminate (read, “kill if you have to, but by all means force to leave the country”) all the blacks and Jews as long as we get those clean coal jobs back like you promised.”
This list is dominated by the films I saw at the Harlem International Film Festival. Since my duties at this fest included doing A LOT of film introductions and Q&As, I saw more films than usual at a fest I am doing the press & PR thing at. But that was a big win for me, as I saw films not necessarily in my wheelhouse that I really enjoyed, appreciated, and affected me quite a bit. Making discoveries at film festivals is what it is all about – and that is exactly what happened here.
highlighted by the announcement of Hoka awards for Ian MacAllister-McDonald’s SOME FREAKS for Best Narrative Feature, Andrea Kalin’s FIRST LADY OF THE REVOLUTION for Best Documentary Feature, Julie Sokolow’s WOMAN ON FIRE for Best LGBTQ Feature, and the presentation of the Lisa Blount Memorial Acting Award to Victoria Negri for her performance in GOLD STAR
Melanie Addington, executive director of the Oxford Film Festival, said, “This will be a major event for the film festival and the community as Danny Glover is not only a beloved actor, known for a number of film classics, but also has long been dedicated to speaking out about the human rights and social injustice.
