The Bentonville Film Festival Foundation champions BFF Alumni filmmakers year-round. We are pleased to share some exciting news about Jacqueline Olive, who came to BFF last year with her debut feature documentary, ALWAYS IN SEASON. This amazing film explores the lingering impact of more than a century of lynching African Americans and connects this form of historic racial terrorism to racial violence today. The film won numerous awards on the festival circuit including the Special Jury Prize for Moral Urgency at Sundance 2019.

Between screenings at more than 50 film festivals, a 17- city theatrical run in NYC, LA, Atlanta, Detroit, Omaha, Washington, DC, Dallas, Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco, Raleigh/Durham, Dearborn, Ithaca, Austin, Portland, Seattle, Baltimore, 12 awards – most recently winner of the Special Jury Prize Award for Ethos by The Social Impact Media Awards, along with nominations for Cinema Eye Honors’ Spotlight Award and the IDA Award for Best Writing — more than 35 press spots, articles and interviews in local and national publications and radio, ALWAYS IN SEASON is surfacing overdue, meaningful conversations about reparations, resilience and healing in the face of the legacy of lynching and racial  terror.

ALWAYS IN SEASON kicked off their theatrical campaign with a public conversation and event at the Ford Center for Social Justice and included special guests there and at our subsequent theatrical screenings with voices including director, Jacqueline Olive, Claudia Lacy (the mother of Lennon Lacy whose story is featured in the film), Bree Newsome-Bass who’s famed direct action brought down the Confederate Flag in South Carolina, Jamilah Lemieux (Slate.com), LaTosha Brown (Black Voters Matter), Vince Warren (Center for Constitutional Rights), Rev Jacqui Lewis from Middle Collegiate Church, Professor Melina Abdullah, co-Founder of BLM-LA, among others.

Jacqueline shares “with support from the Sundance Creative Distribution Fellowship and in partnership with Mia Bruno, Multitude Films and Tell It Media self-distributed ALWAYS IN SEASON, ensuring we could augment our theatrical release as an opportunity to convene movement leaders, activists and thought leaders working transformatively to address the ways that racial terror continues to show up in our local and national governments, and in our communities through what gets written or not written about in the press, inequality in education, voter suppression, mass  incarcerations and more.”

Chosen for Indie Lens Pop-Up, Independent Lens’ flagship neighborhood series that convenes community-driven conversations around special select screenings, ALWAYS IN SEASON is now making its way across 50 communities for events at PBS stations, non-profits, cultural institutions, schools, libraries, and theaters in the lead up to its broadcast on February 24th on PBS’s  Independent Lens. The discussion guide, created in collaboration with ITVS, Blueshift Education and our impact team, will be available accompanying the broadcast and is a rich resource for self-facilitated conversations following the screenings.

Meanwhile, Jackie and impact producer, Monifa Bandele, have been working closely with community partners for the extended in-depth dialogues with special attention to  communities where lynchings have occurred.  In NY alone,  this month the film will be at the Schomburg Center and The Brooklyn Historical Society, and will engage many other communities in justice and reconciliation dialogues over the coming year including, Chicago, Detroit, Raleigh-Durham, Oakland/ San Francisco and others.

We are thrilled that that this film has made such a great impact If you missed this film at our 2019 festival, ALWAYS IN SEASON will have its television broadcast premiere on Independent Lens on PBS on February 24. You can learn more at https://www.alwaysinseasonfilm.com