The Black Movie Hall of Fame will hold its inaugural film festival throughout February 2027 at four Kansas City locations, the organization announced October 6. Presented by AARP, the festival will focus on classic Black films screened in their original 35mm and 70mm formats and will include a special event on February 20 marking Sidney Poitier’s 100th birthday.
The festival is led by Shawn Edwards, executive director of the Black Movie Hall of Fame and a longtime film critic for Kansas City’s Fox 4 News. Edwards pointed to a growing appetite for seeing movies on film and said in the announcement that many of the prints being shown are extremely rare. Poitier, who died in 2022, became the first Black man to win the Academy Award for Best Actor for Lilies of the Field, and the centennial celebration places one of Hollywood’s foundational careers at the center of the festival’s first year.
For Black audiences, the format matters as much as the films. Black cinema has long been underserved by restoration and archival efforts, and many classic titles survive in limited prints or circulate mainly in compressed digital versions. A festival built around rare celluloid prints offers more than nostalgia: it’s a chance to see these films as audiences first experienced them, uncut and on the big screen. Holding it during Black History Month, and anchoring it to Poitier’s centennial, frames classic Black film as living history rather than archive.
Here’s what’s been announced so far:
- Dates: Throughout February 2027
- Location: Four Kansas City venues, to be named
- Presenting sponsor: AARP
- Special event: Sidney Poitier 100th birthday celebration on Saturday, February 20
The festival’s theme, programming, special guests, venues, pass information, and on-sale dates will be announced in the coming months. Updates are available at BlackMovieHallofFame.com and on the Fox 4 News Screening Room podcast on WDAF+.
The lineup will reveal which classics the festival chooses to preserve on the big screen, and which rare prints Kansas City audiences will get to see for the first time in decades.