• Tie
• On September 16, 2013

The New Black, a film by Yoruba Richen, tells the story of the historic fight to win marriage equality in Maryland and charts the evolution of this divisive issue within the Black community. With the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent overturning of Prop 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), this film grants audiences a compelling new way to talk about race and LGBT equality while illuminating the diversity among the African-American community. The film documents activists, families and clergy on both sides of the campaign to legalize gay marriage and examines homophobia in the black community’s institutional pillar—the black church and reveals the Christian right wing’s strategy of exploiting this phenomenon in order to pursue an anti-gay political agenda.

The film has been described as “…a portrait of what it means to be black, what it means to be gay, [and] what it means to be a Christian” (Peter Knegt / Indiewire.com); an intersection of identifiers that commonly yield a cornucopia of conflict, struggle, and misunderstandings from those on both sides of the issue. Director Yoruba Richen’s ultimate hope was for the film to respark and inspire conversations within both the LGBT community and the Black community: ending discrimination, promoting justice, drawing attention to policies, and ideally, promote dialogues that would facilitate progressive change.

The New Black has teamed up with Tugg, a web-based platform that enables individuals and organizations to host movies in their local theaters. On National Coming Out Day, October 11, the campaign kicks off; the film’s screenings are part of an ongoing campaign to open the dialogue around marriage equality and civil rights in communities across the nation.

In a social media fueled amplification effort, The New Black is using Thunderclap to rally the masses. By signing up, supporters pledge to post the brief pre-drafted link shown above to either their Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook accounts on behalf of The New Black‘s silver screen domination plan. Today at 3 p.m. all of the posts will go up automatically in a unified roar of outreach. We’re on board, are you?!?

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

Want to bring The New Black to a theater near you? Find out how here.