JustUs Film Festival – A COVID-Safe Black Lives Matter Protest This July 4th Weekend

As the Black Lives Matter protests have swept the world, one organization is showing protest in a unique way, while allowing people across the globe participate. The JustUs Film Festival is a virtual 3-day festival designed to educate people about systemic oppression on a variety of topics that range from Education, Redlining, Gentrification, Justice System and of course Police Brutality. The goal of the festival is to come up with systems that dismantle oppression.

“Oppression is perpetrated by interconnecting systems,” CMO Sharick LaMay says, “To battle it we must first understand the rules of the game we are playing, and then create our own equally powerful systems.”

All 16 films featured at the festival will be accompanied by live virtual panel discussions with filmmakers, politicians and business leaders, with the aim of finding solutions to the problems.

The company leading the festival is BingeWave, a black-led distribution tech startup. BingeWave is the Airbnb to cinema as it has movie nights using its pop-up model that utilizes any venue besides movie theaters to create more diverse opportunities for filmmakers of underrepresented backgrounds. During the global COVID-19 pandemic, the company pivoted to drive-in movies in open spaces and virtual screenings. It has also mastered the art of online festivals putting together its second festival in less than a month.

“Instead of talking about Independence Day as the day of the founding fathers,” LaMay says, “It’s a day to talk about how the concept of Independence Day with all people being created equal is not how America operates.”

BingeWave stands out in two white-dominated industries: film distribution, which is a 90% white male-led industry, and as a tech startup – only 2% of $85 billion of venture capitalist funding supports Black start-ups. The startup’s presence aims to raise the levels of diversity in both sectors.