On opening night of the 2018 BronzeLens Film Festival, movie lovers were treated to a feast of the senses with a series of independent films. About 70 people crammed into an intimate screening room at the Marriott Marquis in downtown Atlanta for the event, dubbed “All Shorts, All Night,” which was hosted by BET Networks.
The matriarch for the evening was Atlanta film maven Khalimah Gaston, the creator of Screening Room ATL.
The first film shown “Black Korea,” delves into domestic abuse and plight of Korean women who married African-American soldiers in the aftermath of the Korean War.
Set in the 1980s, the film follows two children who are dropped off at the home of their grandmother on the Southside of Chicago.
Shot in Atlanta, the film stars actors Jason Weaver, Jenne Kang, Erica Watson and Bella Gill, the daughter of the movie’s creator, Patti Kim Gill. It is the elder Gill’s life that was the inspiration for the film. Her Korean mother left her at her grandmother’s home in Chicago when she was just a child.
The screening was well represented by the movie’s makers. In addition to Gill, producer and casting director Genia Nooks was there as well.
Bolstering the film screenings this year is BronzeLens’ freshly minted status as an Academy Awards qualifying festival for short films.
Other films that will be screened during the week include select st “Jinn,” a short featuring Zoe Renee of “The Quad,” with Simone Missick from “Luke Cage”; “Isoken,” the Nigerian romantic comedy and the Atlanta-filmed BET miniseries “The Bobby Brown Story.”
