Celebrate Black LGBTQ+ Voices at the Black Alphabet Film Festival 2025

The Black Alphabet Film Festival (BAFF) puts Black LGBTQ+ voices at the center and builds community through cinema and conversation. Founded in 2013 as Chicago’s first Black LGBTQ+ film festival, BAFF now reaches well beyond the city, with pop-up and drive-in screenings, virtual events, and satellite festivals in cities like Cincinnati and Seattle. Our mission hasn’t changed: “to promote social equity awareness and education in all aspects of life for the Black LGBTQ+ community through the use of media and the creative arts.” Every screening, talkback, and gathering answers to it.

BAFF 2025: Year Twelve

BAFF 2025 is the festival’s 12th edition, and we’re calling it “bigger, bolder, and more unapologetically us than ever before.” Across three days—from October 24 to 26, 2025—audiences get features, shorts, and documentaries that “challenge, uplift, and reflect the beautiful complexity” of Black LGBTQ+ communities. Filmmakers come for an audience. Film lovers come for stories they won’t find at the multiplex. Allies come to connect. Everybody gets a seat.

Festival Schedule and Venues

Opening Reception – Friday, October 24

The festival kicks off with an Opening Reception at the Jamii Center for Arts and Media (3850 S Indiana Ave, Chicago). This intimate evening—described as a night “alive with flavor, laughter, and connection”—features live entertainment, light bites, and a special short film by Julia Hester, the festival’s 2025 NOVA artist-in-residence. It’s the night to meet filmmakers, industry folks, and fellow supporters before the screenings begin.

Day 1 – Saturday, October 25 at AMC Theater

Day 1 takes place at the AMC Theater, 1011 S Delano Ct in Chicago, from 12 PM to 6:30 PM. The festival encourages attendees to “come for the films and stay for the culture, dialogue, and vibe.” The Saturday schedule includes:

• 11:00 AM–12:00 PM: Surviving Pulse: Life after a Mass Shooting – A documentary revisiting the 2016 Pulse nightclub tragedy, sharing survivor stories over five years.

• 12:45 PM–2:00 PM: Screenings of Three Vendors of Ipanema, The New Creation Story, The Divine Femme, and Out of Focus. These shorts explore topics from Brazilian street vendors beloved by Rio’s LGBTQ+ community to the celebration of Black and Brown femme identities.

• 2:00 PM–2:45 PM: Non-Binary Music Video, Meet Me., Songbird, and SCORED cover queer love stories, jazz-age romance, and the emotional cost of artistic compromise.

• 3:00 PM–4:30 PM: Soul Kiss & Flower Boi, Plenum, Taper, and an Artist Talkback. Expect themes of intimacy, activism, and identity.

• 4:30 PM–7:00 PM: Assembly – A feature documentary where co-directors Rashaad Newsome and Johnny Symons transform New York’s Park Avenue Armory into a “Black queer utopia,” capturing joy and resilience.

  
  

Day 2 – Sunday, October 26 at AMC Theater

Sunday’s program continues at the AMC Theater. The line-up features:

• 12:00 PM–12:45 PM: Settle Down, Gasoline, and Black Panther, Yellow Tiger, a short exploring interracial same-sex relationships during the 1992 LA riots.

• 12:45 PM–1:35 PM: The Two Essences, The Last Goodbye, and So There’s This Girl. These films take on family dynamics, heartbreak, and queer teenage confession.

• 1:35 PM–2:45 PM: A quartet of shorts—Coffee & Lavender, Petichor, Pink Isn’t Your Color, and Chestbound—exploring summer romance, faith, and identity.

• 3:00 PM–4:00 PM: Queer Memoirs: Too Gay For Me, MAN>CODE, Demons, and home. Expect humor, suspense, and raw portrayals of housing insecurity.

• 4:00 PM–6:00 PM: Come Together followed by a talkback with director Nathan Hale Williams. This documentary revisits Dirty Laundry’s impact on Black queer representation and asks how art pushes social change.

  
  

Spotlight on Featured Films

BAFF 2025 draws stories from across the Black LGBTQ+ diaspora. Here are the films screening this year, alphabetical by title, with their synopses and directors.

• Assembly – Co-directed by Rashaad Newsome and Johnny Symons, this feature documentary chronicles Newsome’s ambitious transformation of New York’s Park Avenue Armory into a “Black queer utopia,” blending performance art, ballroom culture, and community activism.

• Black Panther, Yellow Tiger – Director Lauren Butler depicts an interracial same-sex couple striving to understand one another amidst the 1992 LA riots.

• Chestbound – In Janine Anne Uyanga’s tender film, Ray heals after top surgery while their chosen family helps them confront an estranged parent.

• Coffee & Lavender – Allie Morgan captures a breezy summer romance between two young women that leaves lasting impressions.

• Come Together – Nathan Hale Williams’s documentary examines the impact of Maurice Jamal’s 2006 film Dirty Laundry and celebrates artists who broke barriers in Black queer representation.

• Demons – Directed by Emmanuel Imani, this thriller follows a London cop returning to Lagos to avenge his lover’s death while battling corruption and personal demons.

• Gasoline – Zoë Hodge’s drama uncovers secrets when Jacob comforts a heartbroken friend.

• home – Donja R. Love presents a gritty yet tender portrayal of a homeless queer teen in NYC who contemplates contracting HIV to access housing programs.

• MAN>CODE – A witty short by Adrian Gardner that explores hook-up culture among Black queer men in Britain when an expected no-strings meeting takes an odd turn.

• Meet Me. – Jay Najeeah crafts a romantic drama about a queer couple preparing for an emotional reunion with an absentee parent.

• Non-Binary Music Video – Lena-Camille Otalora reimagines R&B tropes through a queer, Jazz-Age love story set in a dreamy speakeasy.

• Out of Focus – India Martin shares experimental stories of Black queer women and chosen families shaped by tenderness and love.

• Petichor – Directors Audrey Booth and Ren Park explore internalized homophobia when a devout Christian is drawn to an openly lesbian woman at Bible study.

• Pink Isn’t Your Color – Fatima Diallo follows Binta, a secretly queer African-Muslim teen in Atlanta, who sells candy to buy her crush a dream bike.

• Plenum – Charlene Carruthers’ short navigates the AIDS crisis through the eyes of two siblings at a historic Black queer conference.

• Queer Memoirs: Too Gay For Me – In Taja Copeland’s comedic short, Lucki must confront insecurities when his masculine fantasy turns into a voguing nightmare.

• SCORED – Robert Henry portrays Jacob, a Black queer composer in LA, who accepts a new scoring job that stirs up unresolved grief and tests his relationship.

• Settle Down – Sam Coyle’s piece follows Mason’s staycation plan with partner Jarod while colleagues navigate a closeted rap star’s PR needs.

• So There’s This Girl – Written and directed by Isis Gullette, this film follows a Black queer teen struggling to admit her feelings before college.

• Songbird – Jonathan Horton tells of a Jazz singer whose revolutionary lyrics captivate 1930s Harlem and attract unwanted FBI attention.

• Surviving Pulse: Life after a Mass Shooting – Alexa Sheehan shares exclusive interviews with survivors and families of the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting, filmed over five years to reveal lasting trauma and resilience.

• Taper – Ben Locke highlights the microaggressions faced by a queer Black student seeking a barbershop haircut at a predominantly white institution.

• The Divine Femme – Odu Adamu presents voices from Toronto’s ballroom scene as Black and Brown trans and cis women discuss womanism and self-expression.

• The Last Goodbye – Ahlaam Yasmin shows a former couple reuniting in a park to tidy up loose ends after a breakup.

• The New Creation Story – A collaborative piece by Dane Figueroa Edidi, J Mase III, and Audria LB that celebrates the Black Trans community through animated mythology and poetry.

• The Two Essences – Jade Bryan follows Essence, a sexually fluid Latina mother navigating an open marriage and her conservative deaf daughter’s life.

• Three Vendors of Ipanema – Jonathan S. Lee documents street vendors whose homemade foods and long-standing connections with Rio’s LGBTQ+ community embody entrepreneurship and independence.

• BLACK & MERRY – CoquieHughes’ incisive scripted series explores the love lives of urban Black queer women, capturing identity, heartbreak, humor, and healing.

  
  

What Makes BAFF Unique

Community & Dialogue

Talkbacks, panels, and performances put filmmakers and audiences in the same conversation. This year’s artist talkback following Soul Kiss & Flower Boi and the closing Come Together session with Nathan Hale Williams are the two to plan around.

Inclusive Spaces

BAFF is built to be safe and affirming for Black LGBTQ+ people and their allies. From the Jamii Center to the AMC theater, expect good films, good food, and good company.

Beyond Chicago

The festival is rooted in Chicago, but it travels: satellite events run in Washington DC, Houston, Cincinnati, and South Florida. More cities means more eyes on Black queer filmmakers—and more people who get to take part.

Awards & Recognition

As Chicago’s first Black LGBTQ+ film festival, BAFF likes to hand out hardware: winners of the Best Feature, Documentary, and Short categories take home engraved crystal awards.

How to RSVP and Support

Tickets for BAFF 2025 are available now. Early-bird tickets for Day 1 are priced at $10, and there are flexible pay-what-you-can options for the opening reception and day two. To secure your seat:

1. Visit Black Alphabet’s official festival page and select “Get Tickets.”

2. Choose your event—Opening Reception, Day 1, or Day 2—and the number of tickets.

3. Complete the RSVP form and payment details.

   
   

Can’t attend? You can still support BAFF’s mission by donating or sharing the festival on social media. Your contributions help provide free art therapy, mental health services, and year-round programming for the Black LGBTQ+ community.

See You There

Twelve years in, BAFF is still doing what it set out to do: putting Black LGBTQ+ storytellers in front of audiences who need them. This year brings dramas, documentaries, and new voices worth your weekend. Come watch, bring friends—and if you can’t make it, tell somebody who can. October in Chicago. We’ll save you a seat.

Tickets are free/pay what you can. We hope you join us.

RSVP for BAFF 2025