The conversation about Black independent film almost always starts with how much talent there is and ends with how little gets made. DeShuna Elisa Spencer, who founded the Black owned streaming service kweliTV, says the first half has never been the problem.
“There’s no shortage of talented Black filmmakers. What’s often missing is access to the people,” she said. “We created Black.Indie.Ignite. to help close that gap.”
The second annual Black.Indie.Ignite. runs Saturday, November 14, 2026, from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. at the Weeksville Heritage Center at 158 Buffalo Avenue in Brooklyn, with the nonprofit Black Indie Creatives Coalition. It is capped at 100 people. The Ignite Pass is $50 and covers the programming, meals and the evening reception.
That price is a decision, not a detail. “We intentionally kept tickets affordable because we don’t want cost to be another barrier,” she said.
The day is built to send people home with something. Instead of a stage and a panel, it pairs fireside conversations with Ignition Labs, where filmmakers work on their own projects alongside industry professionals. Kia Moses of The Gotham leads a session called Before You Hit Submit, on how funders actually read an application. Filmmakers B. Monet, Okema T. Moore, Stefon Bristol and Jerrica Long take on building a career without a studio or a distributor, whether a short film can lead to paid work, and what makes a funding application land. A fireside talk covers creative ownership, authorship and cultural protection in the AI era.
Eight selected creators present work in a Creator Showcase, with four cash awards totalling $5,500.
“We want filmmakers to come, ask questions, make connections and leave with something they can actually use,” Spencer said.
The support behind it comes from Google, the Surdna Foundation and Voqal Partners. The cap of a hundred is the part that tells you what it is for. A conference sells seats. A room of a hundred, with the people who write the checks standing in it, sells proximity, and proximity is the thing Spencer says has been missing the whole time.
