Peace! Now! Always! Please! - 40. Black International Cinema Berlin 2025 Anniversary Production

40th Black International Cinema Berlin 2025 Anniversary Edition
Theme: Peace! Now! Always! Please!

The Black International Cinema Berlin 2025 celebrates its 40th edition - a remarkable milestone for a festival internationally recognized for its longstanding commitment to intercultural dialogue, social awareness, and artistic diversity.

Produced and directed by Prof. Donald Muldrow Griffith / Fountainhead® Tanz Théâtre, in association with The Collegium - Forum & Television Program Berlin, "Footprints in the Sand?" ExhibitionBerlin and Cultural Zephyr e.V., the festival presents from November 21-23, 2025 at Marlene-Dietrich-Kinosaal at Rathaus Schöneberg Berlin a diverse program of films, art, and discussions centered on peace, humanity, and mutual understanding.

Taking place within the framework of CrossKultur 2025 and in cooperation with ALEX - Open Channel Berlin, the Black International Cinema Berlin continues its longstanding non-profit commitment to fostering respect, inclusion, and creativity.

With this year's theme Peace! Now! Always! Please!, the festival calls for empathy, awareness, and peace - values essential in today's challenging times.
The 40th anniversary invites audiences, artists, and filmmakers to celebrate together, reflect, and engage with new perspectives.
Black International Cinema Berlin 2025 - a space for encounter, inspiration, and hope.

The Black International Cinema Berlin has its origins in West Berlin in 1986. At that time, Fountainhead® Tanz Théâtre produced and directed Europe's first Historic, three-week Black Cultural Festival. Founded by Prof. Donald Muldrow Griffith, the festival emerged in response to social challenges and was created to provide space for the voices, perspectives, and experiences of Black individuals and communities that were often overlooked in public discourse.

Originally conceived as an interdisciplinary cultural event and a forum for film art, exchange, and artistic diversity, the festival remains interdisciplinary and intercultural today, fostering dialogue among different communities, forms of expression, and lived experiences. At the same time, it serves as a platform for transnational cultural diplomacy, rooted in encounter, attentive listening, and mutual respect.

Through the ongoing work of its team - grounded in idealism, commitment, and a strong sense of responsibility - the Black International Cinema Berlin has become an established and enduring part of Berlin's cultural landscape, continuing to embody its guiding principle: Art as a bridge, encounter as the foundation.

For more information and program please visit our website at https://black-international-cinema.com/BIC25/ or email us at bicdance@aol.com.

Mottos:
"I may not make it if I try, but I damn sure won't if I don't..." - Oscar Brown Jr.
"Mankind will either find a way or make one." - C.P. Snow
"Whatever you do..., be cool!" - Joseph Louis Turner
"Yes, I can...!" - Sammy Davis Jr.
"Yes, We can...!" - Barack Hussein Obama
"Yes, we can and Yes, we better...!" - Barack Hussein Obama and Donald Muldrow Griffith

Prof. Donald Muldrow Griffith
Founder/Producer/Director/Curator, Fountainhead® Tanz Théâtre/Cultural Zephyr e.V., November 2025

Fountainhead Tanz Théâtre
Tempelhofer Damm 52 EG
12101 Berlin
Presscontact: Marion Kramer
bicdance@aol.com
017638085459

Fountainhead® Tanz Théâtre
Black International Cinema Berlin
The Collegium - Forum & Television Program Berlin
"Footprints in the Sand?" ExhibitionBerlin
in association with
Cultural Zephyr e.V.

...are an international, intercultural community of persons engaged in achieving increasing understanding and cooperation between individuals and groups in support of democratic procedures and the elimination of violence, religious, ethnic and gender persecution, youth exploitation, homophobia and racial hatred through the process of art, education, culture and dialogue.

Fountainhead® Tanz Théâtre was founded 1980 in Berlin/Germany by Donald Muldrow Griffith and Gayle McKinney together with Lynnda Curry, Ricky Powell and Detlef Bäcker, four American artists and a German colleague, who met in Berlin during 1979 at Theater des Westens and decided to undertake intercultural, interdisciplinary and international productions in dance, theatre, television, workshops, film/video festivals, artistic exhibitions and publications.

As co-founder and director, Donald Muldrow Griffith developed an idea for the artistic, educational and socially critical undertakings of Fountainhead® Tanz Théâtre. In search for a name and philosophy for the group, he read an article in the International Herald Tribune regarding the Pompidou Museum, where the director referred to France as returning to "a source of creativity", a "fountainhead of art" after the dispersal of many art works by the National Socialists during World War II. The return of the works of art and new artistry afterwards, was a source of national honor. The museum was to restore France as an origin of fresh national artistic direction. This approach coincided with Donald Muldrow Griffith ́s ideas and directions. After discussions with his colleagues regarding his suggested title, the name Fountainhead was decided upon.

Fountainhead® Tanz Théâtre is a production, performing, distribution and educational unit. The organization engages people from various national, cultural, ethnic, socio-economic, gender and sexual identities as well as religious backgrounds, and works in a variety of artistic and cultural disciplines, with the goal of creating, experiencing and communicating intercultural exchange within its projects and to the world community.

Upon founding in 1980, Berlin/Germany, Fountainhead® Tanz Théâtre has presented a variety of international, intercultural and interdisciplinary productions in the areas of dance, theatre, film festivals, television programming, film distribution, publications, seminars, exhibitions, workshops and musical presentations.

One of the productions is the annually presented Black International Cinema Berlin, which was founded by Fountainhead® Tanz Théâtre in 1986 in Berlin/Germany and since then, has been produced on a regular basis in Berlin/Germany and other European and US-American cities.
The festival screens cinema from Africa, the African Diaspora and films from varied international and intercultural backgrounds or perspectives.

Black International Cinema Berlin originated from the historical Black Cultural Festival, which was produced and directed by Fountainhead® Tanz Théâtre in 1986 for the first time in Europe, a 3-week event in Berlin, which presented the contributions of Black people to world culture through film, theater, dance, music, workshops and seminars, and was an homage to the legendary tap dancer, Carnell Lyons.

Additionally, Fountainhead® Tanz Théâtre produces and directs, upon founding in 1995, the weekly intercultural television magazine program THE COLLEGIUM - Forum & Television Program Berlin, televised Mondays from 1-2 am, Thursdays from 9-10 am and Saturdays from 2-3 am and 9-10 am at Alex - Offener Kanal Berlin (Alex - Open Channel Berlin), and furthermore presented in Wolfsburg and Portland, Oregon/USA, as well as shared with interested persons and institutions in Europe, the USA, Africa and Asia.

Moreover, Fountainhead® Tanz Théâtre, under the curation of Prof. Donald Muldrow Griffith, produces and directs the photographic exhibition and visual documentation "Footprints in the Sand?" ExhibitionBerlin, which presents a portrait of the activities of various people during their historical contributions to Berlin, elsewhere and hence, the presentation seeks to prevent these undertakings from becoming "Footprints in the Sand?".

In 1990 Fountainhead® Tanz Théâtre established Cultural Zephyr e.V. as a not for profit organization, which administers the cultural and artistic undertakings of Fountainhead® Tanz Théâtre.

Mottos:
"I may not make it if I try, but I damn sure won't if I don't..." - Oscar Brown Jr.
"Mankind will either find a way or make one." - C.P. Snow
"Whatever you do..., be cool!" - Joseph Louis Turner
"Yes, I can...!" - Sammy Davis Jr.
"Yes, We can...!" - Barack Hussein Obama
"Yes, we can and Yes, we better...!" - Barack Hussein Obama und Donald Muldrow Griffith

This release was published on openPR.