CAREERS
Dead Prez at
Green Hop
Rap icons will
headline block
party for new
dispensary
Special Edition
‘City
of
Roses’
Volume XLVII • Number 32
See Metro, page 9
Established in 1970
www.portlandobserver.com
Wednesday • August 15, 2018
Committed to Cultural Diversity
by d anny P eterson /t he P ortland o bserver
Ifanyi Bell, an Emmy-nominated filmmaker and multimedia artist, leads a new fellowship for black Portland filmmakers at Open Signal, a community broadcast
organization, as a way to increase opportunities for African Americans in the industry.
Filmmaker creates
jobs incubator for
blacks, females
by d anny P eterson
t he P ortland o bserver
With more and more films by black writ-
ers, directors, and stars hitting movie the-
aters each year—like this year’s box office
smash Black Panther—it’s no wonder why
community media organization Open Sig-
nal is betting the future of media is black
with their new incubator for local African
American filmmakers, called ‘Open Signal
Labs.’
“We hope to create a safe space immune
from outside influence that will inspire true
innovation and authentic stories of black
Americans,” Ifanyi Bell, the program’s di-
rector, said.
A 12-month pilot ‘fellowship and lab-
oratory for creative investigation,’ which
on
Betting
Diversity
held its orientation at the beginning of this
month, convenes six film makers from
Portland’s black community at the organi-
zation’s public access center in northeast
Portland in part to help bolster female and
minority representation in professional
media careers. Only 5 percent of the top
1,223 directors in the country between
2007 and 2017 were black, and only four
of them were black women, according to
a 2018 University of Southern California
study.
“This is the kind of initiative that our
organization has been missing all along,”
Open Signal Executive Director Justen
Harn said, citing the responsibility of a
community organization in a historically
black neighborhood.
The fellowship is the brainchild of Ifanyi
Bell, an accomplished and Emmy-nom-
inated African American filmmaker who
grew up a mile and a half north of the
original 35-year-old Portland Community
Media building at 2766 N.E. Martin Luther
King Jr. Blvd, which was re-launched at its
same location as Open Signal in 2017.
Bell, 39, had been floating the idea of
having a black filmmaker fellowship to
Harn, and others in the film industry, for
the past two years before it was finally
brought to fruition.
“In the years leading up to my first con-
versation with Justen, I’d been doing a lot
of independent work and freelance work for
places in New York City and in Philadelphia.
And in my spare time I would visit a lot of
festivals and I would talk about creating
something just like this, for black creative
people around the world, really,” Bell said.
Using his connections in the film indus-
try, Bell will be bringing in successful black
media professionals from across the country
C ontinued on P age 4