The 25th edition of the Black Harvest Film Festival, playing at the Gene Siskel Film Center all this month, boasts a robust lineup of titles that are wide-ranging in subject matter and ambitious in aims. The festival opens with “A Black Harvest Feast” (85 min.; Sat 8/3, 7 PM), a series of five new shorts commissioned by the Film Center, and closes with Spike Lee’s Crooklyn (114 min.; Thu 8/29, 6:30 PM), his 1994 ode to his family; Lee’s cowriter, sister Joie Lee, will be in attendance.
Among the fiction films, the vibrant Jamaican sports drama Sprinter (114 min.; Fri 8/23, 4:15 PM; Sun 8/25, 3 PM) is a crowd-pleaser devoid of false sentimentality, thanks to its disarming young lead, Dale Elliott, and a sturdy supporting cast that includes Lorraine Toussaint and Dennis Titus as his separated parents, Kadeem Wilson as his criminal older brother, and David Alan Grier as his strict coach. Elliott plays Akeem, a Rastafarian high school track and field star whose chaotic home life threatens to derail his athletic goals and his chances at college in America, where he could reunite with his mother, who had left him ten years ago to support her family by working without a permit in California. Director and cowriter (with Robert A. Maylor) Storm Saulter does not sugarcoat the dangers facing vulnerable young men in Jamaica, nor their own behaviors that lead them into trouble. Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith are the movie’s executive producers.
8/3-8/29, dates and times vary; see website, Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800, siskelfilmcenter.org, $12, $55 six-film festival pass.
