Sitting onstage at the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival there seemed to be one thing Ruth E. Carter, the Oscar-winning costume designer of “Black Panther,” really wanted the audience to know.
“This is Wakanda for a month,” Carter said, referring to the fictional African utopia and home of the Marvel superhero.
And visitors walking around Oak Bluffs, Edgartown or Vineyard Haven during the month of August may agree with Carter. What was once described as a “family reunion” is booming as an epicenter of Black joy and community, but also cultural influence, political power and corporate investment.
There is a full slate of panels, parties and gatherings that include a comedy festival, a book festival, an awards show, a fashion show, a Y2K-themed party, hosted by none other than early aughts rapper Lil’ Flip, and of course, the nine-day film festival that was started in Vineyard Haven in 2002.
At night, Circuit Avenue in Oak Bluffs is flooded with people getting burgers at Fat Ronnie’s. During the day, the wait time for brunch at Biscuits can be as long as two hours.
“Black folks from all over the country are here,” said Debra Lee, the former chief executive and chairman of BET Networks, who hosted events at the film festival in years past. “The whole tenure of the Vineyard changed. Other brands got the message: If you want to reach Black people, come to the Vineyard.”
Companies are also hosting panels, screenings and parties with actors like Laverne Cox, Keke Palmer and Glynn Turman. Target sponsored a screening of “A New Day Begun: The Black National Anthem,” a short documentary. Google supported “The Art of Possible: Dr. Marian Rogers Croak’s Legacy from VoIP to Responsible AI.” McKinsey, the consulting firm, hosted a conversation on Black maternal health.
Cartier and The Cut hosted a dinner at the Harbor View Hotel in Edgartown with Carter, who designed the looks for movies like “Jungle Fever,” “Malcolm X” and “Black Panther.”
And even the celebrities, including LeToya Luckett, the R&B singer and former Destiny’s Child member, seemed ready to network. “I feel like this could possibly be my introduction,” Luckett said, “and God giving me a peek into what could be, if I ever get the chance to work with her.”
She has been visiting Martha’s Vineyard every summer for five years with her family. “It feels like you’re not in the States anymore,” she said.
Martha’s Vineyard has been a resort area for Black visitors for more than 125 years. From Black whalers to Barack Obama, generations have flocked to the island in Cape Cod for rest and repose.
When Stephanie Rance and her husband, Floyd, started the film festival more than 20 years ago with 50 fold-up seats and a five-disk changer at the Mansion House hotel in Vineyard Haven, they built on this tradition of gathering.
“There was a lot growing pains,” Floyd Rance said. “In the first 10 years, we were still getting to know the landscape and the different venues and places of the Vineyard. August was not as plentiful and as populated as it is now.”
The festival has since moved to the Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center, which seats nearly 800 people, and this year is screening new releases from HBO and Netflix. The Rance Family Foundation also announced a fellowship in film and media at Howard University
“I thought if I did this, it would get me a great job at Disney or Warner Bros.,” said Stephanie Rance, who quit a corporate job to raise her children. “This was the big thing I was supposed to be doing. Those same companies I wanted to get a job at are now giving us money.”
Alongside the sponsors and additional events throughout the month, the number of shorts, dramas and documentaries shown at the festival has grown. The festival has become a place that screens documentaries about Black luminaries; these have included the artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Romare Bearden, and the scholar Chester Pierce, who coined the term microaggression. This year there were also narrative shorts and feature films like “Judas Goat,” “Facade” and “Seahorse,” making the festival a bastion of Black storytelling and a front in the work of preserving Black American stories.
Sibil Fox, a documentarian whose movie was shown at the film festival two years ago, said the trip back was worth it to hear from “the brightest, most brilliant minds among us as they lecture, as they do book talks, as they screen films, as they present their art or their clothing items.”
But it is also possible the island is becoming too small for the festival, suggested the actor Courtney B. Vance, who gave a talk after a screening of “W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel With A Cause,” a film he participated in alongside Jeffrey Wright, Common and Viola Davis.
“The space sometimes doesn’t support all the people that are here,” Vance said. “I’m sure that as it grows, it’s going to have to make some adjustments about it so that the event is pleasurable for all involved,” he said. (He got an electric bike to beat the traffic.)
The contemporary photographer Carrie Mae Weems believes the island attracts so many newcomers and keeps others returning because it provides an ease many Black Americans cannot find readily in the rest of the nation.
“We have a place of refuge where we can gather on beaches and in restaurants and in gardens,” Weems said. But, she added, “It is not just about relaxing. It’s also about learning.”
