Apply at www.charitablefilmnetwork.submittable.com/submit. Please spread the word!  #LoveYall #BlendedBooksClub

Help us Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Loving v Virginia Supreme Court decision with a United States Postal Service commemorative stamp! Please send a message to President Obama and the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee in support of the Loving Festival's petition for a US Postal Service stamp to commemorate the 1967 Loving v Virginia Supreme Court decision.
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     President Barack Obama, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500
     [email protected], www.facebook.com/barackobama, https://twitter.com/BarackObama

     Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee, 475 L’Enfant Plaza SW, Room 3300, Washington, DC 20260-3501

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS:
​The 7th Annual New Orleans Loving Festival is looking for 50 great stamp designs to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Loving v Virginia Supreme Court decision. If selected, your stamp design will be featured in a limited edition Loving Festival Philatelic Collection and Exhibition.  Look Here for guidelines - www.charitablefilmnetwork.submittable.com/submit. Please spread the word!  #‎PutYourStampOnLoving‬ ‪#‎LoveYall‬ :-) ‪#‎LovingFestival‬

The 6th Annual New Orleans Loving Festival is seeking original artwork and short films with themes concerning Love, Race, Identity and the Multiracial Experience, for a juried group art exhibition from July 1st to August 6th at the Myrtle Banks Building Gallery. Please follow the guidelines below for consideration:

1. ART Submissions must include your bio or resume, high resolution photo(s) of the artwork, and a description - including the title, size, medium, and the year the artwork was created.Artwork created before 2013 should not be submitted for consideration.
2. SHORT FILM Submissions must include your bio or resume, a film synopsis, and a web link to preview the film (or screener DVD).

You will need to create a Submittable User Account to submit your materials. See instructions at https://charitablefilmnetwork.submittable.com/submit/56316­. 

The DEADLINE for receiving submissions is Wednesday, June 1, 2016 at Midnight - Central Standard Time.

The New Orleans Loving Festival is an initiative of Charitable Film Network. For more information contact [email protected] or visit lovingfestival.org. Please follow the Loving Festival on Facebook and Twitter!

The 6th Annual New Orleans Loving Festival is seeking original cartoons that address topics related to diversity, multiculturalism and social justice for a group art exhibition, A Loving Judgement from June 4th to July 2nd at the Arts Council of New Orleans’ Exchange Centre Gallery. The exhibition is curated by the Master of Arts in Museum Studies Program, Southern University at New Orleans.

About the New Orleans Loving Festival: The "Loving Festival" is modeled after Loving Day multicultural celebrations across the country that organize people to stand against racial prejudice through education and community outreach. The Loving Festival also honors the legacy of Richard and Mildred Loving, the interracial couple whose 1967 landmark civil rights lawsuit “Loving v. Virginia” ended all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.
The Loving Festival is an important community platform for showcasing films and other creative works that explore racial stereotypes and inspire people to work together for social justice.
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About the Exhibition: Nearly 50 years after the Loving decision, communities in the United States and around the world are still facing social and cultural challenges. Although the new technological revolution in communication and the growing interest in citizen journalism as alternatives to mainstream media have brought people closer together more than ever, they have also uncovered the depth and complexity of some social and cultural provocation. This exhibition explores the themes of diversity, multiculturalism and social justice, and how cartoons and comic strips may reflect the social landscape in the community.

Submissions: We invite cartoon artists to submit their original work related to the exhibition themes. Please use our online application to submit your work. You will be asked to submit the following:
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1. Artist contact information
2. High resolution photo(s) of cartoon submission(s)
3. High resolution photo of artist (for the exhibition catalog and website)
4. Artist statement (between 300 to 400 words)
5. Artist biography (between 300 to 400 words)
6. $35.00 Application Fee

You will need to create a Submittable User Account to submit your application. The submission deadline is March 15, 2016 at 11:30pm CST. Applications submitted after the deadline will not be considered. Successful submissions will be notified by March 29, 2016.  For more information contact [email protected].

TO APPLY VISIT: www.charitablefilmnetwork.submittable.com/submit 

Accepted artwork must be exhibit ready - with a white mat, black frame and hanging wire. Participating artists will be responsible for shipping costs. If resources are available artists will receive a full or partial reimbursement for shipping.
The New Orleans Loving Festival is an initiative of Charitable Film Network.

‪#‎NOLF‬ ‪#‎LovingFestival‬ ‪#‎LoveYall‬ ‪#‎cfnNOLA‬ ‪#‎CharitableFilmNetwork‬

In our interview she discussed the palpability of shame, and it’s evidence in her own life. For Wall, this concept has been linked more directly with the country of her birth.  Born in Korea and relocated to the U.S. at the age of four, Samantha Wall moved around quite a lot, and resided in Fort Jackson, South Carolina for most of her childhood. For a time Wall never questioned her parentage and believed that her white stepfather, also the father of her siblings, was also her father.  However, in 2009 Wall took a DNA test, and discovered that her father was a man of African descent. Traces of European and Native ancestry would imply that he is also, most likely African American.

Samantha explained that finding out her father’s ethnic background was significant in ways that she had not anticipated. Even before she knew that she was both Korean and African, Wall describes feeling lobbied between cultural groups rather than feeling a part of them. This confluence and fracturing of identity is an observable theme in this collection.

Included in her show is an astonishing self-portrait. Only her eyes are visible to the viewer, while the rest of her own image is a silhouette blacked out in charcoal. The title of the portrait, What I Can’t See, reveals what is otherwise invisible to the viewer, and Samantha herself. This level of honesty and vulnerability in art and the socio-political constructs of race forces us all to reconcile its incongruence, and the falsities embedded in who we perceive both ourselves and each other to be—especially when those perceptions are based on phenotypic observations.

Wall’s art exposes and deconstructs socially and politically constructed barriers that regularly impact how we engage with individuals of color. The presence of her work in New Orleans exposes and reveals these concepts in another environment. The portraits belie the inaccuracy and conceptual limitations of deeply entrenched notions of race and ethnicity. As an artist of color who is also a woman, our greatest artistic challenge is to represent women of color, however they identify, in their complete humanity. For Wall to accomplish this in a two-dimensional art form is both rare and exceptional. More than portraits, her work renders all women visible in liberating ways, Indivisible.   

Samantha Wall lives and works in Portland, Oregon. She is married to video and installation artist Stephen Slappe. For more information about her work visit: www.samanthawall.com.  Wall's exhibit is part of the 4th Annual New Orleans Loving Festival and will run through July 31st at Stella Jones Gallery - 201 St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans, LA.  www.stellajonesgallery.com

Jeri Hilt is a former lecturer of African Studies and International Development issues at Tennessee State and Dillard Universities. She has also worked with research, development, and teaching projects in South Sudan, Kenya, Burundi, and the United Kingdom. Hilt, a Louisiana native, currently teaches literacy intervention at an elementary school in New Orleans.

#lovingfestival

Some names just seem to fit like a glove: the New Orleans Loving Festival, now in its fourth year, draws its name from the 1967 Supreme Court case of Loving v. Virginia, a suit brought by an interracial couple that ended race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States. Celebrating the many manifestations of love while at the same time exploring the complexity of identity in contemporary America, this year’s festival includes the traveling exhibition “Of Many Colors: Portraits of Multiracial Families” by Gigi Kaeser and Peggy Gillespie at Antenna Gallery. Quiet yet provocative, the installation contains nearly two dozen color and black-and-white prints of Kaeser’s photographs accompanied by interview transcriptions from a 1997 book on the topic, collected and edited by Gillespie. The photographs depict families of varying size, typically clustered together in warm, affectionate poses, shot both in domestic interiors and in public exterior settings.

Though the exhibition claims that it has a “great deal to teach about racial identity and racism,” its images rarely preach. What makes them so powerful, in fact, is their buoyancy: families laughing, talking, reading, playing, and hugging. Some of the portraits are of biological families, others of adoptive families, still more of long-term partnerships both with and without children, but one thing is common across them all: the care, joy, and love the individuals in these portraits all have for one another, irrespective of the color of their skin, the texture of their hair, or their ancestral roots. They are a striking contrast to the photographs of Ku Klux Klan rallies that belong to the exhibition “Mixed Messages.4” in the adjacent hall, evoking midcentury white supremacist fears of race mixing and “mongrelization,” even as the Kaeser photographs show the horrific consequences of such abominable acts: happy, smiling children, some of whom are even standing on their heads.  MORE >>>

Please mark your calendar for FACING RACE: A National Conference, a unique collaborative space for racial justice movement making. Facing Race is the largest multiracial, inter-generational gathering for organizers, educators, creatives and other leaders.

Facing Race 2014 will be held in Dallas, Texas on November 13-15, 2014. In addition to highlighting a Southern perspective for Facing Race attendees, the 2014 conference will offer the local community unprecedented access to information and resources on racial equity. Previous Facing Race National Conferences have been held in Baltimore, Berkeley, Chicago, Oakland and New York. For a limited time, Race Forward is offering an Early Bird discount. Register today! Use code: FR14Welcome.

Facing Race: A National Conference is presented by RACE FORWARD: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation. Race Forward advances racial justice through research, media, and practice. Founded in 1981, Race Forward brings systemic analysis and an innovative approach to complex race issues to help people take effective action toward racial equity. Race Forward publishes the daily news site Colorlines and presents Facing Race, the country’s largest multiracial conference on racial justice.