This screening is part of the Newark Black Film Festival.

  • Kokomo City, directed by D. Smith. (73 min). Not rated
    A raw depiction of the lives of four black trans sex workers as they confront the dichotomy between the Black community and themselves.
  • Look Back at It, directed by Felicia Pride (12 mins). Not rated
    A forty-something single mother gets her groove back with a little assistance from her teenage daughter. Look Back at It is set in Baltimore and also serves as a proof of concept for a feature film of the same name. This short film will play before Kokomo City.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Tahtiana Fermin, founder of Bridges4Life, Whit Strub, Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, Adaryll Moore, Amoore Enterprises.

Moderator: Roe Bell, NJPAC

Location: Billy Johnson Auditorium

Get TicketsPurchase Festival PassFull 2023 NBFF Schedule

Meet the Filmmakers

Felicia Pride

Director, 'Look Back At It'

Baltimore native Felicia Pride is a TV writer / producer and an award-winning filmmaker. She wrote on Ava DuVernay’s QUEEN SUGAR and was most recently a producer on GREY’S ANATOMY. She’s currently developing shows with Amazon, Netflix, and FX. In film, she’s the writer and executive producer of REALLY LOVE, produced by MACRO, which debuted on Netflix and became a Top Ten Movie on the platform. And she’s sold features to Universal, Sony, and AGC Studios. She made her directorial debut with tender, a short film which aired on STARZ, and she is currently on the festival circuit with LOOK BACK AT IT, a proof of concept for her directorial feature debut by the same name. She founded and runs HONEY CHILE, a production company catering to Black women 40+ and is the co-host of their NAACP-nominated podcast Chile, Please.

Felicia was a Film Independent Screenwriting Lab Fellow and a graduate of NBC’s Writers on the Verge program as a comedy writer. She started her writing career nearly twenty years ago as an entertainment journalist before going on to write several books, including the essay collection, The Message: 100 Life Lessons from Hip-Hop’s Greatest Songs. Prior to transitioning to screenwriting, she worked as a film distribution exec and an impact producer. Felicia holds an M.A. in writing from Emerson College and runs The Create Daily, a resource for underrepresented storytellers that she founded in 2012.

D. Smith

Director, 'Kokomo City'

Trailer for Kokomo City

video thumbnail

Trailer for Look Back It