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Black Youth Project 100 DC Presents: If Beale Street Could Talk

A portion of ticket sales and bar sales will go to BYP100 DC

ABOUT BYP100 DC:

BYP100 DC is a collective of a Black activists who organize, protest, and create to fight for Black liberation in the DC area. The chapter started in 2013 after the Trayvon Martin verdict galvanized young Black activists to start BYP100 to strive for justice. Since then, weve been turning up for Black people by engaging in political education, organizing direct actions and campaigns, working with coalitions, participating in lobby days, and doing cultural productions like mixtapes and zines. We focus on transformative change and work through a Black queer feminist lens, meaning that we understand that oppression is intersectional and layered, so we focused our efforts on empowering the most marginalized members of our community. If youre interested in getting involved, contact BYP100 DC at dc.chapter@byp100.org!

ABOUT THE FILM:

Based on the novel by James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk is the story of Tish, a newly engaged Harlem woman who races against the clock to prove her lovers innocence while carrying their first-born child to term. It is a celebration of love told through the story of a young couple, their families and their lives, trying to bring about justice through love, for love and the promise of the American dream.

"Jenkins has been justly praised for adapting James Baldwins 1974 novel (not necessarily the most apparent Baldwin text to work through) with an eye to its insights on African-American identity, subtly (and not so subtly, with its ending) shifting elements and emphases to reflect upon the present." - Film Comment

"Jenkins achieves something rare: he pulls the background into the foreground, combines a drama with an essay-film, an analytical documentary. Whats more, he does so without at all weakening or diminishing the drama; rather, the movies investigative elements intensify its emotional power, by reflecting them through its characters voices and consciousness." - Richard Brody, New Yorker

"A lesser film might have left it at that: prison as both where black life seems to start, and where it seems to end. Thats a daring, urgent ideabut it wouldnt be the whole story. It wouldnt account for the persistent struggles for joy, progress, intimacy, hope, laughter: the stuff Jenkinss film is full of." - Vanity Fair