Black Harvest Community Council Members
Barbara (B.A.) Allen
Harold Dennis
Lonnie Edwards
D’Tura Green
Okema “Seven” Gunn
NK Gutiérrez
Kristy Johnson
Cortlyn Kelly
Muteeat Lawal
Alessandra Pinkston
Bolaji Sosan
David Weathersby
Contacts
Black Harvest Film Festival | Rebecca Fons, director of programming, rfons@saic.edu
Make a Gift
Contact Lauren Malloy, assistant development director, lmalloy@saic.edu
About Our Black Harvest Programming Team
Jada-Amina H. will return as curator of the Gene Siskel Film Center’s Black Harvest Film Festival for its 30th anniversary edition. Jada-Amina, who served as festival coordinator in 2022 and curated the 29th edition, Revolutionary Visions, in 2023, will lead this year’s festival’s curation, direction, and programming.
We’re also excited to welcome back Nick Leffel, who supported Black Harvest as an intern in 2022 and served as festival coordinator last year! Nick will play a key role in coordinating community outreach, filmmaker discussions, and special events.
Jada-Amina Harvey (BFA 2020) is the curator of the Black Harvest Film Festival. A Chicago-based artist, writer, and cultural worker, Jada-Amina’s practice explores the nuances of Black life across space and time. Rooted in sound, writing, video, and collage, their work engages with history to reclaim and reimagine Black narratives, resurrecting collective memory across time and space. Jada-Amina also stewards Public Programs and Engagement at the South Side Community Art Center.
Nick Leffel is a North African and Middle Eastern filmmaker and curator who serves as the coordinator of the Black Harvest Film Festival. As a filmmaker, Leffel’s work expresses themes of international politics, cultural upbringing, adoption and personal documentary. His filmography includes Zordovia My Love (2021), Flowers Forever (2022), and Dakhla (2023).
About the Gene Siskel Film Center
Since 1972, the Gene Siskel Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago has presented cutting edge cinema to an annual audience of 100,000. The Film Center’s programming includes annual film festivals that celebrate diverse voices and international cultures, premieres of trailblazing work by today’s independent filmmakers, restorations and revivals of essential films from cinema history, and insightful, provocative discussions with filmmakers and media artists. Altogether, the Film Center hosts over 1,600 screenings and 200 filmmaker appearances every year. The Film Center was renamed the Gene Siskel Film Center in 2000 after the late, nationally celebrated film critic, Gene Siskel.
About the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
The Gene Siskel Film Center is a public program of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). For 150 years, SAIC has been a leader in educating the world’s most influential artists, designers, and scholars. Located in downtown Chicago with a fine arts graduate program ranked number two by U.S. News and World Report, SAIC provides an interdisciplinary approach to art and design as well as world-class resources, including the Art Institute of Chicago museum, on-campus galleries, and state-of-the-art facilities. SAIC’s undergraduate, graduate, and post-baccalaureate students have the freedom to take risks and create the bold ideas that transform Chicago and the world—as seen through notable alumni and faculty such as Michelle Grabner, David Sedaris, Elizabeth Murray, Richard Hunt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Cynthia Rowley, Nick Cave, and LeRoy Neiman.
Accessibility
The Gene Siskel Film Center strives to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals to engage fully. To request reasonable accommodations or for inquiries about accessibility, please contact filmcenter@saic.edu or call (312) 846-2600 at your earliest convenience. Click here to read more.
