12th Annual Baltimore International Black Film Festival
October 2 - 6, 2025
Assembly
Location: Pikes Studio Cinema – Theatre 1 & 2
Thursday, October 2, 2025, 7:30pm
Synopsis
Assembly follows internationally acclaimed artist Rashaad Newsome as he embarks on his most ambitious project yet — a multimedia exhibition and performance at New York’s historic Park Avenue Armory. Once a bastion of white military power, the Armory is transformed into a vibrant celebration of Black and queer culture through video projections, holograms, sculptures, collages, music, dance, and African fractal patterns. This reimagining challenges colonial power structures while honoring the complexity and resilience of the Black experience.
Through innovative hybrid storytelling, breathtaking visual effects, and the ongoing presence of ancestors, Assembly transcends traditional documentary as it weaves together Rashaad’s creative process, dynamic performances, and the lives of his collaborators. Powerful moments, such as a memorial for murdered Black trans women that evolves into a protest march, highlight art’s capacity to reclaim agency and inspire change, offering a vision of intergenerational resilience, transformation, and hope.
Director’s Bio: Rashaad Newsome
Rashaad Newsome is an award-winning filmmaker, multidisciplinary artist, and innovator whose work defies conventional boundaries, blending film, performance, technology, and community organizing. Through his visionary approach, he crafts immersive experiences that challenge outdated narratives and create new spaces for Black, queer, and trans stories to thrive. Rashaad’s previous works include critically acclaimed projects that merge animation, sculpture, music, and artificial intelligence. His films reflect a philosophy of collage—both in form and content—deconstructing and reimagining the world through expansive, inclusive lenses.
A recipient of an Honorary Doctoral Degree in Fine Arts from the University of Connecticut, Newsome has exhibited and performed in galleries, museums, institutions, and festivals throughout the world, including Hayward Gallery (London), the Studio Museum in Harlem (NYC), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), the Sundance Film Festival, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture (D.C.). He has created more than 15 short films that have screened in arts institutions, festivals and on PBS. Recent awards for his work include the 2022 Newfest Emerging Black LGBTQ+ Filmmaker Award, the 2022 Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica Award for Computer Animation, and the 2025 Creative Capital Award.
Director’s Bio: Johnny Symons
Johnny Symons is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker who has directed and produced multiple award-winning LGBTQ-themed feature documentaries. His films include Daddy & Papa, which premiered at Sundance, broadcast in more than a dozen countries and garnered 12 festival awards, Out Run, which premiered at Full Frame and aired on public television, and Ask Not, which broadcast nationally on PBS and screened at the U.S. Capitol. His work has screened at more than 200 international film festivals and received support from funders such as Sundance, Tribeca, ITVS, Catapult, HBO, Frameline, and the California Council for the Humanities.
Johnny is a former fellow in the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program and longstanding member of New Day Films. Johnny is co-producer of the Academy Award-nominated Long Night’s Journey Into Day, which won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and streamed on Showtime, and executive producer of Pray Away, which premiered at Tribeca and is streaming on Netflix. He graduated with honors from Brown University and has a Master’s in documentary production from Stanford. Currently, he is professor and MFA coordinator in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University.
Following Harry
Pikes Studio Cinema – Theatre 1 & 2
Sunday, October 5, 2025 6:30pm
Synopsis
FOLLOWING HARRY, a film by Susanne Rostock (Sing Your Song), is an intimate documentary that chronicles the last twelve years of legendary Harry Belafonte’s life, highlighting the artist-activist’s enduring commitment to social justice. Fueled by his tremendous sense of urgency to inspire the next generation of entertainers and activists to stand for justice, the film provides a window into both his public endeavors and private moments, capturing his journey from the aftermath of the death of Trayvon Martin, to his engagements in the protests in Ferguson, the Women’s March (which was created in his office), to the deeply and profound conversations in his home.
The film ultimately amplifies Harry’s belief that “each generation must be responsible for itself. All I can do is leave behind the crumbs of my experience. I have a trail that you can follow, if you find value in it, pick it up and if you don’t, bring something better.”
Director’s Bio: Susanne Rostock
Long esteemed as “an aural and visual poet”, Susanne Rostock’s filmmaking is a stunning 40 years of some of the most compelling documentaries of each decade. Her most recent film as director/editor, Following Harry, joins the artist and activist Harry Belafonte, beginning at the age of 84, as he embarks on at twelve-year journey to find out how to redirect oppression to oblivion. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June, 2024. This film is a sequel to her film, Sing Your Song, about Harry Belafonte’s earlier life as an artist and activist and was chosen to open the U.S. Documentary Competition section of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.
Rostock, an EMMY NOMINATED editor and director, has achieved recognition on a myriad of films that continue to endure and resonate. In addition, her films have earned acknowledgement from multiple national and international festivals, had theatrical distribution, and aired on numerous television and cable platforms – HBO, BBC, PBS, etc. Her 20-year multi-award winning collaboration as editor with director Michael Apted has produced provocative films as: The Long Way Home; Incident At Oglala; Me & Isaac Newton; Inspirations; The Power of The Game; Moving The Mountain.
Susanne studied anthropology and ethnographic filmmaking with Margaret Mead at Columbia University and received an MFA in Filmmaking from New York University. She resides in New York City.
Click Here For A List of Short Films, Web Series & New Digital
