In a city as lively, diverse and vibrant as Oakland, innovation is important and celebrated. So it would only make sense that a film festival highlighting innovation would be created in da town’.

The Inaugural Oakland Innovation Film Lab is more than your average film festival. It’s a 4-day festival held at Oakland School for the Arts in Uptown from June 18-21 featuring short films, documentaries and panel discussions with a focus on films from emerging artists and student filmmakers.

In a fusion of creativity and imagination the film selection is courageous, bold, and inventive.

Over these four days you’ll:

• Learn of one man's attempt to use the power of hip-hop for positive social change in Uganda
• Follow young women of the Cuban revolution who taught literacy in the rural communities of Cuba,
• Explore the fantasies, emotions, and memories that race through one’s mind during a singular moment of love, and,
• Unearth the history and social significance of soul food, its connection to black cultural identity, and its larger impact on society.

Particularly exciting is that the whole festival opens with Youth Lab workshops focusing on student filmmakers in partnership with youth-powered organizations tackling high school drop out rates, poverty, and gun violence.  The opening workshop will include a filmmaking Lab, screening of student films highlighting career tracks into film industry, and panel discussion with producers and educators working professionally in the film world. Youth Lab films will also be screened throughout the OIFL before each Feature Documentary.

In a great mixology that feels, smells, and tastes so authentically Oakland, the 4 day film fest will leave you inspired, motivated, and forever changed with new perspectives and ideas. But that’s what film is supposed to do.

Tell your friends and get more information about the film fest here.

*The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights is serving as a community sponsor of The Oakland Innovation Film Lab