In the early 2000s, playwright August Wilson told his friend, actor and director Jerry Foster, about “Jitney,” a play Wilson had written more than two decades earlier. It follows the owner of an unlicensed cab company, Jim Becker, his staff and the return of Becker’s son from prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Set in Pittsburgh in the 1970s, it is a part of a 10-play cycle by Wilson which celebrates daily African American life and culture.
Wilson originally wrote the play in 1976, but its republication in 2001 garnered new attention, including an Outer Critics Circle Award and a Laurence Olivier Award. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival featured a performance of “Jitney” this year.
“The conversation happened that there were others,” said Foster, who has over three decades of arts experience in Portland. “There are a lot of plays out there that don’t see the light of day.”
Foster continued to work in the playwright scene in North Carolina, specifically with the International Black Theater Festival, after Wilson’s death in 2005. About 20 years later, Foster put on the first Pacific Northwest Multicultural Readers Series and Film Festival, or PNMC, with the intention of highlighting playwrights, filmmakers and creatives of color.
“A lot of times, they don’t have these platforms where they can come together and have people exposed through their work as either filmmakers or writers,” said Lesharn Hopkins, a curator of the PNMC who previously worked with Foster in North Carolina. “That’s why it’s important to have a platform where all the artists of color are coming together.”
Held every two years, the 2025 festival will take place Aug. 14 through 17 at the DoubleTree Hilton in Northeast Portland. The first festival, held in 2021, was virtual. Organizers switched to in-person in 2023. This year’s PNMC Festival will feature 37 film screenings and 25 script readings, in addition to a vendor fair, master classes and celebrity guests. It’s produced by Passinart — a theater company started in 1982 and the oldest active Black theater company in Portland.
Featured films
One featured animated film, “Boxnard,” created by Dr. Martín Alberto Gonzalez, a professor of Chicano studies at Portland State University, is inspired by his hometown of Oxnard, California and the boxing culture present there.
Growing up in a largely Latino community, Gonzalez says it’s important for kids to have stories of cultural empowerment. He says he never saw cartoons with explicit “brown is beautiful” messaging.
“I’m talking about a cartoon that says we need to value the immigrants who are being discriminated against, the immigrants that are being called illegal aliens,” Gonzalez said. “We need to value, protect them and support them.”
Through the animated medium, Gonzalez found he could empower his community — specifically youth.
“That’s why I’m so proud of it, is because it’s a cartoon, but it’s unapologetic,” Gonzalez said.
Bryce Mackey, along with his creative partner and friend Brennan Collins, created another short film selected for the festival called “Lotus.” Mackey and Collins met for one hour each week for six months leading up to filming.
Shot over the course of five days at Mackey’s family cabin in Everett, Michigan, the film follows the internal dialogue of someone who’s lost in life. It allows the audience to fill the gaps in the character’s mind. Mackey said he wanted the film to give people hope.
“We tried to make a movie that would help allow people to see more of the beauty within their own being,” Mackey said. “Their own mind and their own body.”
Another notable feature is a film by Tamika Lamison in which she recalls her childhood growing up in Atlanta, Georgia, amidst the Atlanta child murders of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The film is called “Superman Doesn’t Steal.”
The festival will also feature films submitted from outside the United States, such as “Fatih the Conqueror,” a submission from French filmmaker Onur Yagiz. It tells the story of cultural prejudice when a man falls in love with a woman outside of his culture.
“Through films from various cultures, you learn about different cultures, and you also discover it really doesn’t matter from where you originate on this globe,” said Kathryn Mobley, a curator of the festival who met Hopkins when she launched a film festival under the umbrella of the International Black Theater Festival in North Carolina. “We’re all pretty much the same. We all want to be loved. We all want to be accepted. We all want to have fun. We’re all socially awkward. We all have dreams.”
Mobley says when she first watches a film, she closes her eyes to listen to the dialogue. According to Mobley, even in big box office movies there are times when actors mumble or the sound will not be clear, thus making the story confusing. After that, she watches for cinematography and pacing. American audiences are used to the pacing of action movies, according to Mobley, but she looks for films that slow down at the right moments.
“It is a wonderful challenge to get us to be willing to slow down and embrace and get captivated and lost into character-driven pieces,” Mobley said.
PNMC ultimately supports independent filmmakers. For selected scripts, it holds open calls for directors and actors to bring them to life in real time. Hopkins says the readers’ series is important because it gives creators a test run at widely producing and releasing their art.
“Make sure you find a director, that director has read your script, they understand your characters,” Hopkins said. “They understand the story. They can tell you what they like about you, what are the nuances, what’s the subtext, and that they really can relate to what you wrote, to bring that to life to help you select the actor.”
Hopkins helped develop the festival schedule. Performance art and acting classes are in the morning, with filmmaker classes scattered throughout. Designated blocks of film screenings run one after another.
One highlight will be Thursday, Aug. 14, at 7:30, when festival ambassador Regina Taylor will read and perform “Exhibit,” a story of Black resilience.
Hopkins says she knows it’s a full schedule.
“You’ll be like, oh my gosh, there’s so much to do,” Hopkins said. “But that means come back the next time.”
Tickets and passes to the festival are available at pnmcfestival.org.
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This article appears in August 6, 2025.