NEW YORK — Black Public Media (BPM) is on target to hit $2 million in funding this year for film and immersive projects through its PitchBLACK Forum — the largest pitch competition of its kind in the United States for independent filmmakers and creative technologists who create Black content. The event will take place in Harlem on Wednesday, April 30, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Winners of production and distribution awards will be announced at the PitchBLACK Awards on Thursday, May 1, at 7 p.m., an event during which history-making film editor Lillian E. Benson, ACE (American Cinema Editors) will receive the prestigious BPM Trailblazer Award. Benson is known for her Emmy® nominated work on Eyes on the Prize II, Showtime’s Soul Food, NBC’s Chicago Med and OWN’s Greenleaf. Sponsored by Netflix and PBS, PitchBLACK will feature creatives pitching their projects before an audience of public media, commercial television networks, distributors and funders from across the country.
BPM is a national nonprofit that funds quality film and immersive work, develops media makers and produces and distributes original content. Since 2015, the group has awarded more than $1.8 million to 23 film and immersive projects through the competition, which this year moves to The Apollo Stages at the Victoria in Harlem, the New York City neighborhood where BPM is based. With BPM planning to award more than $225,000 to projects this year, the organization will break the $2 million mark for funding awarded through the PitchBLACK program since it launched in 2015.
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“We are happy to host PitchBLACK in the creative and cultural mecca of Harlem this year,” said Leslie Fields-Cruz, executive director of BPM. “PitchBLACK always offers a wonderful array of projects presenting unique mixes of entertainment, ingenuity and craftsmanship. We look forward to what this year’s creatives have in store for audiences.”
Advertising futurist Tameka Kee returns as moderator of the PitchBLACK Forum this year. Those competing in the film segment, taking place from 9 a.m. to noon, all with documentary projects are: Sidney Fussell and Jennifer Holness; Karen Hayes; Arlieta Hall and Brittany Alsot; Chelsi Bullard and Jacqueline Olive; and Caron Creighton. Immersive project competitors — Anatola Araba, Aya, Steven Christian, Jeremy Kamal, Joel Mack and Rasheed Peters — will take the stage from 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. with projects that incorporate artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality, 3D animation, or are games.
Winners of the PitchBLACK Forum will be announced at the PitchBLACK Awards on Thursday, May 1, at 7 p.m. Hosted by comedian Jamie Roberts, the event will include a conversation with Benson moderated by NPR host Brittany Luse (It’s Been a Minute). The winner of the Nonso Christian Ugbode Fellowship, named after BPM’s late director of digital initiatives and awarding a talented under-30 creative, will also be announced at the awards ceremony. The evening will culminate with a lively afterparty. Tickets for the PitchBLACK Awards are $300 and can be purchased at the Apollo at: https://www.apollotheater.org/event/pitchblack-awards-ceremony.
This year’s BPM Trailblazer Film Retrospective will feature a curated collection of works edited by Benson available for streaming for free on blackpublicmedia.org between April 28 and May 12. Films include Beyond the Steps; Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise; New World, New Forms and The Taste of Dirt; and two parts of Eyes on the Prize II: The Promised Land (Part 10) and Keys to the Kingdom (Part 13).
PitchBLACK is sponsored by Netflix and PBS, with additional support from Corporation for Public Broadcasting, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Acton Family Giving, Agog LLC, New York Community Trust, Rockefeller Family Fund, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Jerome Foundation, Sonder Foundation and New York Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment.
To find out more about the competing projects, visit https://blackpublicmedia.org/pitch-black/pitchblack-2025/. For more information on BPM, go to blackpublicmedia.org. Follow the organization and watch PitchBLACK highlights at @blackpublicmedia on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
