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People in the News

Friday, July 11, 2025

People in the News

Friday, July 11, 2025

African American film renaissance – Weinstein credits the “Obama effect”

12 Years a Slave is an early Oscar favorite
12 Years a Slave is an early Oscar favorite

The number of African-American stories being told at the cineplex this year amount to a “renaissance” propelled by an “Obama effect,” said movie studio chief Harvey Weinstein at the Toronto Film Festival on Monday.

“Hopefully it signals, with President Obama, a renaissance. He’s erasing racial lines. It is the Obama effect. It’s a better country. What a great thing,” Weinstein shared. 

The line-up of films include the brutal slave drama that some are already calling the likeliest movie to take an Oscar, 12 Years a Slave,  tells the true story of a free black man captured and forced into slavery.

Weinstein has three other movies telling black stories this year, Fruitvale, about a young black man shot needlessly by police on New Year’s Eve in Oakland, Calif.; Mandela, about the South African liberation leader; and The Butler which surprised Hollywood with it’s box office success last month. 

To read more visit TheWrap.

Do you expect 2013 to usher in a new era in Black film that will provide real opportunities behind and in front of the camera?