Charles Burnett News

On April 7, 2025, stars of the stage and screen gathered to honor the life of the late James Earl Jones at the James Earl Jones Theatre on Broadway. Check out photos here!

Benjamin Booker has announced LOWER, his first new album in 7 years, due out January 24, 2025 with a video for its explosive lead single “LWA IN THE TRAILER PARK.” Watch it now!

Among those artists whose early films Cooper championed are: Chantal Akerman, Matthew Barney, Charles Burnett, David Cronenberg, Julie Dash, Terence Davies, Asghar Farhadi, Haile Gerima, Michael Haneke, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Mike Leigh, Lucrecia Martel, Mira Nair, László Nemes, Gaspar Noé, Christopher Nolan, François Ozon, and more.

The Coolidge Corner Theatre ('the Coolidge') has announced the early lineup for its Winter / Early Spring 2023 Big Screen Classics series. 

Crucial artistic voices, including director Charles Burnett, Samuel L. Jackson, Whoopi Goldberg, Laurence Fishburne, Zendaya and others, artists offer their prism on the creators and films that dazzled and inspired, providing insight into the history of Black representation going back to the earliest days of cinema.

Director Sidney Lumet followed a string of Oscar®-winning 1970s classics with this lavish adaptation of the popular Broadway musical The Wiz, noted for its lively score and all-Black cast.  The Academy Museum’s first anniversary screening of The Wiz will feature live dance performances by the Debbie Allen Dance Studio youth performers.

The Coolidge Corner Theatre ('the Coolidge') today announced the fall lineup for its 2022 Big Screen Classics series. In a nod to both the beloved independent cinema's long track record of showcasing innovative, boundary-pushing works of film, art and the start of construction on its expanded space, the theme of this year's series is Groundbreaking Films.

The first museum exhibition of its kind, Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898–1971 opens at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on August 21, 2022. It offers the public a chance to learn more about how Black performers and filmmakers have helped define cinema in the United States. The exhibition explores the achievements and challenges of both independent production and the studio system, from cinema’s infancy in the 1890s through the height of the civil rights movement. Regeneration features rarely seen excerpts of films restored by the Academy Film Archive, as well as other narrative films and documentaries; newsreels and home movies; photographs; scripts; drawings; costumes; equipment; posters; and historical materials, such as entrance tickets, note cards, and telegrams; along with augmented reality experiences (AR) designed specifically for the exhibition.

“From intimate, personal tales to political, metaphysical, and spiritual inquiries, the films in the 50th edition of New Directors/New Films embody an inexhaustible curiosity and a fearless desire for adventure,” said La Frances Hui.

The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures today announced that scholar, programmer, and educator Jacqueline Stewart has been named Chief Artistic and Programming Officer.

African Film Festival, Inc. (AFF), the premier U.S. presenter of African cinema, has unveiled its new streaming platform and digital archives at its online home, africanfilmny.org.

With more than 1,000 artists and more than 500 free events in three new sunlit pavilions and more than 130,000 square feet of new landscaped green space at the nation's cultural capital, the REACH opens its doors in exactly one month's time with 16 full days of creativity in action, providing artists and audiences with the opportunity to experience art as never before. Marking the first expansion at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in its 48-year history, the REACH welcomes the public with an inclusive, multi-genre, multidisciplinary Opening Festival on September 7a?"22. See the video trailer here.

As part of its 30th Anniversary programming, renowned Highways Performance Space will present on Friday, August 2 and Saturday, August 3, a special two-night film retrospective and benefit that pays tribute to 2017 Honorary Oscar recipient and legendary filmmaker, Charles Burnett, with the debut of Highways O.U.R. retroSPECTIVE film series and its first installation, a??CHARLES BURNETT: A Cinematic Social Conscience.a??

More artists and activities have been added to the REACH Opening Festival, the free 16-day celebration highlighting the many and varied ways that the Kennedy Center's newly expanded campus will connect, inspire, and engage audiences and artists. Please see below for an updated artist roster, and visit https:cms.kennedy-center.orgfestivalsreach for additional information.

This fall, artists and audiences from the Washington, D.C. area, the U.S., and around the globe come together at the nation's cultural capital to dance, sing, create, collaborate, listen, learn, talk, share, and celebrate the opening of the REACH, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts's unprecedented new expansion. At a preview event today, May 29, which marks both President Kennedy's 102nd birthday and 100 days until the historic opening, the Kennedy Center unveiled preliminary details of the free 16-day REACH Opening Festival on September 7-22.

From Friday, May 3 through Wednesday, May 22, BAM presents Black 90s: A Turning Point in American Cinema, a nearly three week-long program of films, both low-budget art films and classic blockbusters, from an era of explosive creativity and newfound studio support for black filmmakers.

From Friday, August 17 through Thursday, August 30 BAMcinematek presents Say It Loud: Cinema in the Age of Black Power, 1966-1981. A cinematic companion to the Brooklyn Museum's exhibit Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, the series explores revolutionary and relevant records of a struggle that continues to this day. As black consciousness spread across the globe in the mid-1960s, it gave rise to a radical cinema that both reflected and worked to further the cause of African-American liberation. "These films are confrontational, experimental, and ripe for (re)discovery, powerfully evoking their own time, and unarguably speaking to today's fractious social and political climate," explains series programmer Ashley Clark.

Recording artist and Oscar-winner Common hosted the fourth annual “Toast To The Arts: A Celebration of Fearless Art” event, March 2, honoring the Academy Award nominations of Get Out nominee Daniel Kaluuya (Best Actor); Mudbound nominees Mary J. Blige (Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Song), director Dee Rees (Best Writing Adapted Screenplay) and producer Charles D. King; as well as legendary filmmaker Charles Burnett.

After 25 years as director of the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University, Sherri Geldin has announced she will leave the helm at the end of December 2018.

Bard College announces the appointment of esteemed filmmaker Charles Burnett as Visiting Artist in Residence in the Film and Electronic Arts Progra