PRIZES

Prizes

Several prizes will be awarded on Opening Night of the Black Harvest Film Festival:

  • The Richard and Ellen Sandor Family Black Harvest Film Festival Prize. This year marks the seventh year that a $1,000 prize will be awarded to a short film, and the fourth year a $2,500 prize will honor a feature film.
  • The Sergio Mims Prize for Excellence in Black Filmmaking, a one-time cash award of $5,000, will go to a local Chicago filmmaker whose work is included in the Black Harvest lineup.
    • We are grateful to Kartemquin Films for their stewardship of the funds, and also to the friends and family of Sergio Mims who made donations, particularly Barbara Allen, Sylvia Ewing and Cleo F. Wilson for their leadership in creating this fund.
    • This fund was established after the passing of Sergio Mims and honors his legacy as a co-founder of Black Harvest and a leader in Chicago’s Black filmmaking community.

Jurors

Julie Dash

Julie Dash is a filmmaker and visual artist. In 1991, she broke racial and gender boundaries, becoming the first African American woman with a feature film in wide theatrical release, the Sundance award-winning film (Best Cinematography) DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST, ranked #60 on the BFI’s list of the 100 Greatest Films Ever Made. Dash has also written and directed for CBS, BET, ENCORE STARZ, SHOWTIME, MTV Movies, HBO, DISNEY’S HULU and OWN Television. Her long-form narrative films include the NAACP Image Award-winning, Emmy, DGA-nominated, THE ROSA PARKS STORY, and LOVE SONG. In 2022, Dash was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by President Biden, for a lifelong commitment to building a stronger nation. Dash holds MFAs in Screenwriting and Theater Arts from the American Film Institute and UCLA, and is the Diana King Endowed Professor in the Department of Art & Visual Culture at Spelman College.

Robert Daniels

Robert Daniels is an Associate Editor at RogerEbert.com. Based in Chicago, he is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association (CFCA) and regularly contributes to The New York Times, IndieWire, and Screen Daily. He has covered film festivals ranging from Cannes to Sundance to Toronto. He has also written for the Criterion Collection, the Los Angeles Times, and Rolling Stone about Black American pop culture and issues of representation.

Raven Jackson

Raven Jackson is an award-winning filmmaker, poet, and photographer from Tennessee. Recently nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature and a Gotham Award for Breakthrough Director, Raven’s debut narrative film, ALL DIRT ROADS TASTE OF SALT world-premiered in the US Dramatic Competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, and was named one of the top ten movies of the year by The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and RogerEbert.com. She has served as a Story Editor for HBO’s adaptation of Sula, based on Toni Morrison’s novel, and co-wrote an episode of the Apple series Surface . A companion book to her debut feature, Stories From a Place Where All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, also includes her poetry and photography. Jackson is a Cave Canem fellow and holds MFAs from New York University’s Graduate Film Program and the New School’s Writing Program.