This weekend in New York, the Urbanworld Film Festival wrapped up it’s 12th annual festival with a closing screening of The Secret Life Of Bee’s starring Queen Latifah and BET‘s Film Meets Fashion at the upscale venue Espace on Saturday evening.
The closing night screening and the BET event featured a number of
celebrity appearances including Queen Latifah [click to read], Superbowl champion Jerome Bettis, LaLa
Vasquez, R&B singer Case, and others.
The five-day long festival consisted of a number of big name screenings including Steve Harvey: Still Trippin, Wu: The Story Of The Wu-Tang Clan, Tennessee starring Mariah Carey, Zane’s Sex Chronicles, and more.
“Great festival, probably the best we ever had,” Stacy Spikes,
founder of the Urbanworld Film Festival told HipHopDX. “The movies make
everything and [we had] closing night with Secret Life Of Bee’s and opening with Steve Harvey and we’ve had the most films [this year]. We had 85 films.”
The festival also included a number of other films by up and coming filmmakers including the urban drama Streetballers.
“It
was a great experience overall. I learned a lot. It was very well put
together, professional,” Craig Thomas, one of the producer’s of Streetballers
told HipHopDX. “This is my third film festival and this was definitely
the best so far. A lot of great films in it. I was basically just
impressed with the professionalism as a whole and I think it’s an event
that’s going to be able to compete with the top festivals soon.”
The Urbanworld Film Festival was founded in 1997 and since its
creation the festival has been a successful outlet for the urban
filmaking community.