Films in the the Langston Hughes African American Film Festival (LHAAFF) combine both call call-for-work entries and curated films selected by the curator and committee. Awards are given to call-for-work entries in three categories; Audience Award, Jury Award and Local Filmmaker Award. In 2009 the festival gave an additional nod to Short films as a separate category.

The audience favorite for Best Short Film, is the narrative short, “PRODUCTION”. Danielle feels like the littlest person in the room. Her job as the script coordinator for “Major Case: New York”, a wildly popular television series sounds exciting, but with a daily routine of copy, collate, repeat, she doesn’t quite agree. When producers introduce plans to shoot an ill-conceived “urban” episode of the show Danielle finally feels compelled to use her voice. But will it be big enough?

The Sean Bell case: On the night of November 26, 2006, Sean Bell was to be married but would never make it to the altar. After celebrating his bachelor party at a Queens, NY strip club the night before his wedding Sean Bell was shot dead in a barrage of 50 police bullets that seriously injured two of his groomsmen. The three men had been shot by five undercover NYPD detectives who would later testify that they believed the men to be armed and dangerous. None of the three men were found to be carrying a weapon and none were ever charged with a crime. The shooting sparked outrage throughout New York City, even prompting an early presumption of excessive force from the city’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg. Ultimately, three of the five officers involved in the shooting would be indicted on charges of manslaughter and reckless endangerment. The case brought up memories of other controversial police shootings, namely the fatal shooting of an unarmed African immigrant, Amadou Diallo, in 1999. On April 25, 2008, a year and a half after Bell’s death, all three officers were acquitted of all charges. The verdict led to a series of protests against racial profiling and police brutality throughout New York City.

About The Filmmakers: In 2006, Carmen L. Scott was beginning her first season as a writer’s assistant at “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”. When a rough draft of a script for a hip-hop themed episode of the show crossed her desk in December of 2006, one month after the Sean Bell shooting, she began blogging about the 16 days it took to shoot the episode and the uneasiness she felt helping the stereotype-laden script get filmed. Ultimately she would turn the blog into a screenplay, and with the help of husband and partner, Lenny Payan, into a short film. Carmen got her start in the film industry in 2005 as an intern at Spike Lee’s Forty Acres & a Mule Filmworks where she earned credits on the feature films “Inside Man”, “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts” and “Miracle at St. Anna” as well as several commercial projects.

Lenny Payan also began his film career as an intern at Forty Acres & a Mule Filmworks. He quickly moved into the role of production assistant at the company where he learned his craft on movies such as “25th Hour”, “She Hate Me” and “Inside Man”. He’s been working as an assistant director and editor since 2002 earning credits on numerous independent film projects and as a mainstay in the commercial and video world. In 2007 Carmen and Lenny formed Best Of 7 Films and produced “Stick With The Plan”, a public service campaign targeting youth in at-risk communities. Currently, they are focused on raising funds for their next project, a feature film set in the Mississippi Delta entitled “Rome”.