Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Dozens of filmmakers gathered at Queens Borough Hall in New York City for the 2025 Queens World Film Festival Presser on October 15. The 2025 Spirit of Queens honoree was Warrington Hudlin.
According to the announcement sent out via e-mail to people with tickets, the event started at 10am. People were invited to come at 9:30 to mingle and have some snacks and coffee.
Before 10, organized Katha Cato announced that the building had scheduled a shelter-in-place fire drill at 10am exactly. This caused a delay in the proceeding, but after about 15 minutes things were able to start. By the time many filmmakers were in attendance, each at a table set up to allow people to come ask them about their film.
Starting off the proceedings was Harriet Tugsmen, who joked that Beyonce was intrucing the event. “It is early in the morning”, she commented, adding, “I am a local drag performer here, in Astoria, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and sometimes internationally because I go to Jersey… Thank you all for telling stories, using your vision, your eyes, your dialog, to give a(sic) image to someone that is unheard, and please understand I’m using unheard versus voiceless, because we have our voice, a lot of people just choose not to listen.” The audience applauded at that.
Katha Cato then took back the floor to discuss freedom of speech; “this is not the time to put your cameras down.” After expounding at length, she introduced Queens borough president Donovan Richards Jr., who commented on Queens’ diversity, “190 countries 360 languages and dialects are spoken in this county.” He went on, “we’re not going to cower in fear … we’re going to be proud to tell our story in Queens county.”
Cato next introduced Sandra Shulberg, and Donald Preston Cato. Shulberg describd Hudlin as her hero. She also mentioned Hudlin’s many filmworks, including House Party, Boomerang, and Unstoppable. She discussed his work in film preservation and archiving, stating that when working with IndieCollect in 2013, he found the lost original film cut of Gordon Parks‘ Solomon Northup’s Odyssey, which starred Avery Brooks; the film was just restored.
Next, Hudlin spoke, first crediting his mentors, Melvin Van Peebles, who was the winner of this award in 2016, Harry Belafonte, Ossie Davis, and Ruby Dee, then following with “it’s not about me, it’s about we”, before pointing out many of the people who were in the audience with whom he had worked, making sure to give credit. After declaring that the new generation of filmmakers have been “anointed to tell those stories”, he ended with having the audience repeat after him – “We will not surrender” – twice, closing with “Peace out.”
After Hudlin’s acceptance speech, there were two more brief speeches. The first was from Rolf of ??, which he described as a distribution company that wanted to “be known as the platform that launched the next big directors, the next big voices for the next generation”. Next was Slovenian visual artist and filmmaker Nataša Prosenc Stearns, who described herself as “doing things that are hard to categorize”.
To close, a 2025 festival sizzle reel was shown, followed by an extended period of mingling and photo taking.
(need to consult notes for proper spelling)
