By Aaron Allen, The Seattle Medium
The Seattle Black Film Festival, hosted by the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, will once again this year showcase some of the area’s most talented filmmakers and artists and the work they have done. One such native son filmmaker to be honored for his film work “Biological” is national and international film and play director Justin Emeka. Emeka, a professional film director and tenured professor of theater at Oberlin College, possesses a masterful resume in both film and theater.
The child of a military father, Emeka lived in many different places but finished his teen years in Seattle, where he found his sanctuary, the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center where his love for the dramatics was incubated and born.
“I grew up doing theater,” says Emeka. “Theater was my safe space. I found a lot of refuge in the theater as a kid. My family moved around a lot, I was always looking for a play to audition for in community plays, school plays, church plays, I was just that kid.”
“On this journey, Langston Hughes was one of my spots where I would visit a lot in my late teens. I did quite a lot of stuff at Langston Hughes. Becoming a summer camp counselor for a performing arts camp, writing plays and directing kids, I did that for several summers,” Emeka adds.
A graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio in 1995, Emeka majored in Black studies and theater before returning to Seattle, where he began directing plays at Langston Hughes again, including a play call “Pressure: A Hip Hop Theatre Experience that he produced alongside his brother.
“Seattle was my artistic home,” says Emeka. “I came home after college and directed a play at Langston Hughes called Pressure: A Hip Hop Theatre Experience. My brother and I put the story together, enlisted hip hop artists to put the music together, a choreographer, went to Yesler Terrace and the Rainier Beach community and asked kids to be in it.”
“From there I continued to get deeper into the art, writing, directing, some acting, but mostly writing and directing,” continued Emeka. “I then attended graduate school for directing at the University of Washington and then I started studying how to put Black culture in classical theatre, in classic text like Shakespeare. So, reimagining Shakespearean text through the lens of Black culture. I did MacBeth and Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
After completing his education at the University of Washington, Emeka started directing plays around the country, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a Shakespearean classic and Romeo and Juliet at the Classic Theatre of Harlem. Emeka was invited back to teach at Oberlin College where he reimagined MacBeth, and Death of Salesman with actor Avery Brooks. While Emeka was making a name for himself in the theater world, it wasn’t until the country experienced COVID that he transitioned to film.
“I really got involved in film during the pandemic,” Emeka reflects. “During the pandemic when theatres shut down my son was going to school for film and he was of that class of 2020 and when he came home he taught me how to film edit. So, he and I started talking about making films together.”
Writing his first screenplay in 1998, after the birth of his son, fatherhood shelved the ‘Biological” project until 25 years later when his, now adult, son discovered the written piece and was impressed and suggested that his father revive the efforts to produce the short film. Fast forward to today and ‘Biological’ will be showcased at the film festival along with another of Emeka’s films ‘Six Winters Gone Still’.
“Langston Hughes is looking at my work, looking back at my work, so they are going to show a documentary short that shows my journey,” says Emeka. “They will be showcasing two of my films, Biological and Six Winters Gone Still, a reimagined scene from Shakespeare’s Richard the Second. I took a scene and put it in a contemporary Black cultural context and turned it into a short film.”
Like careers in all industries, challenges are never far behind when people chase their dreams and Emeka is no different as he describes the one challenge future artists should always keep in mind as they travel in this space.
“One thing that is a challenge and that I have had to overcome in my career is persistence,” says Emeka. “Dealing with rejection in the art world, when you make a profession out of art you are not going to be able to please everybody. You can’t. So, learning how to deal with ‘no’s’ and keep going and not take ‘no’ personally, to be persistent in your work is hard.”
“Finding a space for your creative voice or creative vision trying to find a spot in the art community on a local level, a national level, even on global level. A lot of times, again, you can feel like what I am saying is really not relevant to anybody, that’s when you can be at your lowest and you have to push through those times,” continued Emeka.
Believing in yourself, believing in your work when no one else will is a major mindset for any artist or for anyone for that matter and Emeka is a firm believer. “I loved being on stage since I was a kid. When it comes to acting, I have no fear,” says Emeka. “I cherished the limelight. That wasn’t hard for me. The hard part was navigating the industry because it is so much driven off of who you know and relationships that you have and establish.”
For Emeka, being a part of The Seattle Black Film Festival is a full circle moment that he does not take for granted.
“This is a great honor and deeply moving to come back full circle to Langston Hughes and reflect the tradition that helped bring me up,” says Emeka. “There are people I looked up to during my youth at Langston Hughes. Artist like Steve Sneed, Rico Bembry, Jackie Moscou, and Vivian Phillips. These mentors helped found Langston Hughes and I remember growing up admiring their work, their work ethic, their commitment. The building of Black art institutions and what it took for them and just the level of commitment and love they invested in the center and invested in us as young people so to be honored in the legacy is deeply moving. I hope to try to keep this tradition going and inspiring the next generation.”
Learn more about the 2024 Seattle Black Film Festival