Hartford Public Library is hosting a special film series this month that celebrates Black culture while also creating discussions around pressing social issues in the Black community. The Black Love Film Series is free and open to the general public but has special interest for those in the field of social work.
The Love Series: A Black Social Work Film Festival is based on a series established several years ago in Massachusetts and is just now branching out to Connecticut. The Hartford Public Library has done similar events in the past which use the arts to further conversation on important contemporary topics such as mental health and relationship issues. The series is co-sponsored by the Greater Hartford Alliance of Black Social Workers, in partnership with the Metro West Massachusetts Alliance of Black Social Workers.
Keith Mascoll, who curated the festival and also stars in one of the films, calls “The Love Series” an exercise in “real-time learning” that uses “art as a learning tool.” He said all three films in the series are “African diaspora films that deal with a social context and also give social workers an opportunity to examine their practice. The first film involves financial literacy, the second has to do with foster care and the third explores manhood from a queer Black man’s perspective.”
The new short film “Emascipation” by Tré Hazelwood concludes the three-film Black Love Film Series at Hartford Public Library on Feb. 28. (David Mahone)
Mascoll is the new president of the Metro West Massachusetts Alliance of Black Social Workers. He is also the founder of The Triggered Project, which produces the “Living a Triggered Life” podcast and the “Triggered Life” stage show and film, all of which deal with sexual trauma and abuse among Black men and boys.
The series is held on three Saturdays in February from noon to 3 p.m. at the downtown Hartford Public Library’s Center for Contemporary Culture. Each screening is followed by a panel discussion. Admission is free.
The first screening, on Feb. 7, is “Knockaround Kids,” directed by John Oluwole AdeKoje. The film is described as “a two-week snapshot of the lives of three troubled youth navigating the Massachusetts social welfare system and the failures of those assigned to protect them.”
On Feb. 14 The Love Series presents “Confused by Love,” directed by Crosby Tatum and starring Mascoll as Ferguson Middlebecker, in which “a non-social author and his wife invite his successful best friend — and former ex-girlfriend — to stay with them in an attempt to save their home from foreclosure.”
Hartford Film Showcase comes back bigger and stronger for second year
There is no screening on Feb. 21. The final screening, Feb. 28, is “Emascipation” directed by Tré Hazelwood. The short film is described as “an exploration of the Black male experience and mental health within traditional perceptions of Black masculinity.”
Mascoll said the three films were chosen to correspond with “ideas the Greater Hartford Public Library already had” identified in the library’s various community programs. The Feb. 7 and 14 screenings are “films we know Hartford hasn’t seen before,” Mascoll said, and have been screened in the Massachusetts series, while “Emascipation” is a recent work, released just last year, that is new to both the Connecticut and Massachusetts audiences.
Mascoll said it is largely coincidental that the series is happening during Black History Month. He notes that February is also “Black Love Month.” Feb. 13 is known as Black Love Day, a complement to Valentine’s Day on Feb. 14, which rather than focusing on romance is more concerned with community values, self-worth and loving oneself.
“The Love Series is about love through education,” Mascoll said. “It’s more about love than anything else.”
The Center for Contemporary Culture is on the second floor of the downtown Hartford Public Library, 500 Main St., Hartford. For more information about The Love Series, go to programs.hplct.org.