Congrats to BBP’s Creative Director Sultan Sharrief for making the cover of Detroit’s BLAC magazine – looking sharp!

http://www.blacdetroit.com

An intimate conversation with BBP Creative Director Sultan Sharrief, enjoy!

Congratulations to BBP’s Creative Director Sultan for being named one of the top 25 new faces in Independent Film!  A true honor for a truly amazing man:

http://filmmakermagazine.com/news/2010/07/25-new-faces-part-4/

Special thanks to Scott Nielsen and the UMass Muslim Students’ Association for putting on a great screening of Bilal’s Stand at the Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst (home to Exec. Prod. Chris Blauvelt).  We were able to get local TV coverage for the unique event, check out the short video – enjoy!

This video does a great job highlighting the importance of a good education, and the cost on society for not supporting a strong educational system!

Bilal’s Stand has been selected as a finalist for the Crystal Heart Award at the Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis.  The award ceremony will be Saturday, Oct. 16 and the movie will be screening throughout the week.

We’re really excited about this opportunity – this is the largest Independent Film prize in the world and would really help bring the needed attention and publicity to Bilal’s Stand.  We’ll also be making another really important announcement involving schools – that’s all we can say for now!

Bilal’s Stand was selected for Special Jury Mention at the 2010 Port Townsend Film Festival this past week! “… as an example of filmmaking in the most honorable sense. Praise to this young thoughtful filmmaker who used his story as a learning tool and then as a teaching tool – inviting everyone from his community to participate in one way or another. An example of how infectious and healing filmmaking can be…”

An excellent series highlighting the positive side of Detroit – there’s a growing sense of a Detroit revival through the influx of young, artsy entrepreneurs (like Beyond Blue Productions!).  If you’ve got an idea, Detroit is a great place to build it up from scratch, and you’ll find lots of people sympathetic to your cause.

Catfish (2010) is a movie making a splash through AMC Theatres independent distribution project, iamRogue.com.  Just another example of the changing face of cinema through independent film.  Social media is changing everything (for better or worse), and in this case it’s giving the underdog a chance.  We’re definitely taking notes!

Check out this iReport from CNN and take time to see the movie if you can – we’d love to hear your thoughts!

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-496159?hpt=C2

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