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When considering what we are and are not capable of—or who we are or could be—maybe we need to consider whether we need to expand our imaginations about what our lives are and could be. CEO and Artistic Director of BlackStar—a company which produces “year-round programs including film screenings, exhibitions, an annual film festival, a filmmaker seminar, a film production lab, and a journal of visual culture”—Maori Karmael Holmes did not always feel like she belonged in the film industry. It was that state of isolation that led her to create reimagined and established futures for herself and for Black, Brown and Indigenous creators. 

Named for the Black Star Line—the literal and symbolic shipping line and backbone of Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey’s Back-to-Africa movement—the BlackStar Film Festival was started in 2012 to uplift the voices and stories within and across the African diaspora. In 2014, Holmes decided to expand to include Brown and Indigenous filmmakers. In an interview with Indiewire, Holmes says:

I was hearing from friends who were not Black, but people of color, who were saying that the festival wasn’t anything like anything they’d experienced, for reasons that were often about politics and aesthetics. And so we decided, if these other folks were feeling a kinship with us, then we should consider their work, and think about what transracial allyship looks like.

Holmes’s decision to expand the submission criteria makes sense in context of her film background, ethos, and consistent, future-building vision that hinges on community and collaboration. “Collaboration is essential to everything that I do,” she tells Delta in her TED2017 interview.

Coming from a filmmaking background, you can’t make a film alone…and so I think coming out of that training and that kind of ethos and thinking about how all the parts come together—it’s just crucial. There’s no way to do those large-scale projects as a single entity or even a single organization.

Holmes’s artistic journey began with an upbringing in theater, dance and journalism. Having graduated from Temple University with her MFA in Filmmaking, she has since worked as a curator, filmmaker, director, and writer. Her films have been screened internationally. Her writing can be read in publications including Documentary Magazine, The Believer, Film Quarterly, and Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good. She currently serves on the boards of numerous organizations, including the American Documentary (POV) and Asian Arts Initiative, and she is a member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia and Programmers of Colour Collective.

When considering who she is and who she could be, Maori Karmael Holmes thinks beyond the individuated self and into diasporic collaboration. By following Holmes’s example and embracing the collective, we might create communal spaces and resources that both endure and adapt, birthing a new origin for the selves we are and could be.