The National Black Programming Consortium, which has primarily funded and trained filmmakers of color since it launched in 1979, will become a direct distributor of their work with the launch this month of a new online showcase, blackpublicmedia.org.
The new portal, separate from NBPC’s organizational site, nbpc.tv, will show off repurposed and original video projects, some available free and others for sale, says Christian Ugbode, technology and new media coordinator.
“Usually we’re just guys who fund documentaries that go on public television, but now we’ll be able to broadcast ourselves,” says Ugbode, who is overseeing the project.
“We’re trying to create an aggregate space where content specific to the black experience can be found online.”
The new site isn’t meant to replace the broadcast partnerships with P.O.V., Independent Lens and other strands that air consortium-funded docs. Rather, it will be an outlet for projects that emerge from its professional development workshops and similar ventures, such as young filmmaker programs at historically black universities, Ugbode says. This winter, the new online showcase may feature a variety of takes on the Mississippi blues and its origins that will come out of NBPC’s New Media Institute, a six-week combo of online and in-person (in Jackson, Miss.) training. [Information on NBPC's New Media Institute, application deadline Aug. 22, 2007]
NBPC, one of five ethnic consortia long funded by CPB, began contemplating a content site after last fall’s new-media seminar at Boston’s WGBH.
The heart of the new site will be a video player, Ugbode says. Tech staffers are still finalizing their player plans.
Content will also be made available to other pubcasting video outlets, such as the Open Media Network, Ugbode says. “Our video could rest in plenty of other places,” he says.
Longer-term plans are for blackpublicmedia.org to sell DVDs and downloads of consortium-funded projects.
Among the first offerings will be Afropop, a film series (not affiliated with the pubradio show) that surveys contemporary life and culture in Africa. The first titles explore, among other subjects, rap music in Capetown, South Africa, (Hip Hop Revolution) and Nigeria’s filmmaking industry (Welcome to Nollywood), the third largest behind Hollywood and India’s Bollywood. The consortium is still working out distribution deals with other filmmakers, Ugbode says.
Web page posted Aug. 20, 2007
Copyright 2007 by Current Publishing Committee
