REEL UNITY PAIR: The Tower Road Bus, America, You're Beautiful

2021 BIBFF Official Reel

The 8th Annual Black Film Festival features over 80 films from 16 countries on October 6-11, 2021. We are proud to bring this amazing group of "Official Selections" to Baltimore City both in our Virtual Theatre and at the SNF Parkway Theatre in Baltimore's Station North Arts District. Enjoy the films and be sure to use the unique pairs and shorts programs to have you own #ReelUnity moment.

America, You're Beautiful

Poet Nina Brewton expresses the complicated relationship she and many other Black citizens have with America, while contemplating a path forward. The wordless soundtrack for voices was composed by Scot Hanna-Weir, and performed by Bridge Voices. Presented in collaboration with The Poet Life.

The Tower Road Bus

Fifty years after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of busing children to achieve racial integration in schools, The Tower Road Bus revisits the unresolved stories of African-American students and educators thrust into all-white schools during the 1970s.

Against the backdrop of violent anti-busing protests across the nation, Dotson Burns, Jr, a child of Jim Crow-ridden Fort Worth, Texas, lands on the frontlines of school integration, first as a teacher and then as the first Black principal of a majority-white school in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Mindful of the eyes of white parents and the suspicions of Black students and families, he must oversee the busing of frustrated Black students from the historically-Black community of Tower Road to the mostly white Crestview Elementary School.

While debates over racial justice and equity reach a boil in 2021, The Tower Road Bus brings Burns, his teachers and students, and the audience face to face with the ambitious yet controversial integration measures that seized the national agenda 50 years ago and continue to mold our conversation around equity.