Filmmaker Sam Pollard, one of the most prolific and important forces in contemporary documentary, will be honored by Black Public Media at its upcoming PitchBlack Awards in New York.
Pollard — who directed or co-directed four films and docuseries this year alone, including The League and Bill Russell: Legend — will receive the BPM Trailblazer Award in a ceremony on April 25. The event is set to take place at the Stanley H. Kantor Penthouse of Manhattan’s Lincoln Center, capping the latest edition of BPM’s PitchBLACK Forum, described as “the largest pitch competition of its kind in the United States for independent filmmakers and creative technologists who create Black content.”
“A multiple Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning producer-director-editor, Pollard is known for his work on a plethora of important works including: Eyes On The Prize, Maynard, MLK/FBI, Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power, and Mr. SOUL!,” a release noted. “He also has served as an editor on Spike Lee’s Clockers; Mo’ Better Blues, Jungle Fever, Girl 6, Bamboozled, and Four Little Girls.”
The release also cited some of Pollard’s most recent work: “Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes (PBS), about the legendary jazz drummer and composer, which just won a 2023 International Documentary Association (IDA) Best Music Documentary Award; and South to Black Power (HBO), about journalist and author Charles M. Blow’s call for Black people to reverse-migrate to the South as a strategy for Black Liberation.”
Pollard won an Emmy for his work on Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006) and earned an Oscar nomination for producing and editing Lee’s above-mentioned 4 Little Girls (1997). He is at work directing several upcoming films including The Sound of Philadelphia, about the songwriting and producing trio of Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, and Thom Bell, who founded Philadelphia International Records (Deadline wrote about that project last year).
Among previous winners of the BPM Trailblazer Award are Orlando Bagwell, Joe Brewster, Michèle Stephenson, Yoruba Richen, and Marco Williams, “all fêted for their long-standing work, primarily in public media, as a producer, director, writer or editor,” the release said, “and for having a strong track record of mentoring the next generation of media makers.”
Leslie Fields-Cruz, executive director of BPM, said in a statement, “Sam has continuously brought to life urgent Black stories that need to be seen and studied, crafting films that preserve the history and beauty of so many aspects of American culture. He has also helped to prepare a new wave of truly talented storytellers. It’s time for all of us to give him the flowers he deserves.”
As part of BPM’s PitchBLACK Trailblazer celebration, the release noted, a select group of Pollard’s films will be screened in a special film retrospective. “The program features a combination of in-person and virtual screenings as well as a conversation with the filmmaker.”
BPM is a Harlem-based national nonprofit “which funds and distributes original content, and produces compelling work, including its signature series AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange.”