Film Festival Calls it a Wrap After Final 'Envelope Please'
August 12, 2007 - Boston Globe
The ninth annual Roxbury Film Festival drew to a close last Sunday, after drawing more than 4,000 people to its five days of screenings and events. During the closing reception held at the Roxbury Center for Arts at Hibernian Hall in Dudley Square, prizes were awarded to the following films and directors:
Film Festival Delivers Culture
Augst 1, 2007 - Northeastern News
Now in its ninth year, the Roxbury Film Festival is New England’s largest film fest celebrating people of color.
Roxbury Film Festival Showcases Reel Diversity
August 1, 2007 - Boston Herald
A Nigerian flag hangs from the face of a new house. It flaps quietly, green and white.
Inside, a father and daughter are at odds. His robust West African accent commands her to her room. She appeals, with no trace of an accent. He wears a military costume; she wears a T-shirt and shorts that traveled in her luggage from America.
Fest Opener's An Attention Grabber
July 29, 2007 - Boston Globe
Director Jennifer Sharp's zippy romantic comedy "I'm Through With White Girls," which opens the Roxbury Film Festival Thursday, is more clever and less mean than the title might imply.
Once a Hub of Strife, Boston Woos Black Tourists
December 8, 2006 - New York Times
On a warm November weekend morning, some 35 people from Massachusetts, New York, Missouri and Pennsylvania pack the benches of a trolley rolling through Roxbury, a historically black neighborhood in Boston. For two hours they listen as the tour guide explains how residents are building on vacant lots created when the neighborhood disintegrated in the 1960s.
Hip Hop Artists Urged to Find Own Way
February 5, 2005 - Boston Globe
Do you.
That's what Berklee College of Music professor Bill Banfield told about 180 aspiring hip-hop artists yesterday in Roxbury during the Hip-Hop Empowerment Summit: Making Your Music Heard. Banfield, who specializes in black music, urged youths to share their unique stories in a world that he said has become lopsided with tales of violence, drugs, and sex.
Resolved to Making a Difference
January 1, 2005 - Boston Globe
Those who live, work, or socialize in Roxbury may have felt Candelaria Silva's hand at some point this year. Toured art studios in October? That's Silva. Discovered the work of filmmakers of color in August? Silva. Purchased the neighborhood literary magazine filled with teen writing in February? Yep, Silva. Attended a May stage reading of fledgling playwrights' works? Silva, again.
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Roxbury Writers Read Work at RCC
Teen Voices Heard in ACT Roxbury Publication
March 18, 2004 - Bay State Banner
Writers who call Roxbury home can be thankful for how Candelaria Silva runs the ACT Roxbury Consortium, a program of the Madison Park Development Corporation.
What other community has an organization devoted to authors of color like this one? With Silva at the helm, Act Roxbury annually runs a film festival with its emphasis on independent films made from scripts written here. The consortium also offers a playwrights workshop led by the internationally acclaimed dramatist Ed Bullins who assists writers to pull a play out of themselves that ACT Roxbury then puts on in readings open to the public and in some instances gives full productions to. Finally, the consortium publishes a quality literary magazine that looks as smart as anything else on the news stand.
Acting Up
Candelaria Silva and ACT Roxbury use the arts to enliven a long-underserved community
October 3, 2003 - The Boston Phoenix
WHEN MOST PEOPLE think of art in Boston, they think of the galleries of Newbury Street. The city’s renowned museums. Fort Point Channel. They do not, as a general rule, think of Roxbury.Candelaria Silva and ACT Roxbury are working to change that.
ACT Roxbury is the cultural economic-development program of the Madison Park Development Corporation, a 37-year-old community-development organization whose mission is the social, physical, and spiritual renewal of long-embattled Roxbury. In the six-plus years since its inception, ACT — it stands for Arts, Culture, and Trade — has put together a host of events and initiatives to enrich the community, including Roxbury Open Studios, the Roxbury Literary Annual, and the Roxbury Film Festival, this year attended by such Hollywood luminaries as CCH Pounder and Victoria Rowell.
To Be A Force for Positive Change
An arts/development activist's vision, work, and prayer life.
Aug 26, 2002 - The Christian Science Sentinel
Candelaria Silva directs ACT Roxbury Consortium, a nonprofit organization devoted to economic development fueled by the arts, culture, and trade. Ms. Silva lives and works in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood, which once had Jewish, Irish, and other immigrant enclaves, but for more than a half-century has been "hometown" to Boston's African American community. The Sentinel's Warren Bolon talked with Ms. Silva about the arts as an engine for community development, about her spiritual roots and search for meaningful worship. Ms. Silva began the conversation by explaining what makes Roxbury distinctive.
