After postponing in 2025, the Hayti Heritage Film Festival returns to Durham March 4-7. 

This year’s event includes 15 feature films and shorts written and directed by Black creators, with genres ranging from documentary to horror. Several of the shorts being shown were made by filmmakers local to Durham. 

Hayti Heritage Center historian Marc Lee and former executive director Dianne Pledger founded the festival in 1995. Their goal was to provide a platform for independent filmmakers and artists in Hayti, Durham’s historically Black community. 

Interim artistic director for the heritage center and first-time festival creative director, Monèt Marshall, says the idea is to celebrate the wider aspects of Black family culture around the world, and in Hayti specifically. 

“This space has already always been thinking about Blackness in a global context, and I think it’s really important in our art,” Marshall said. 

The 2026 theme, “Classic. Creature. Comforts,” exposes the duality of black joy in high art and popular culture. While the festival theme changes with each creative director’s vision, independent art remains at the core.

“We want to make sure we are investing now so that we have more Julie Dashes, more Oscar Micheauxs, more Ryan Cooglers,” Marshall said. “We can’t have them if we’re not investing in independent filmmakers.” 

One filmmaker featured is Ebony Bailey. Bailey’s latest project, “Songs of Reclamation,” retraces the history of the banjo through Hannah Mayree, a Black musician and banjo-maker. Bailey said the project intends to highlight the banjo as a Black instrument in a time when Black culture is often erased. 

“I see filmmaking not only as a form of self-expression, but also as a form of community building,” Bailey said.

As part of the film, Bailey followed Mayree’s performance at the inaugural Biscuits and Banjos Festival in Durham last year. It was through this connection to the city, and her own family ties to North Carolina that Bailey decided to submit her film to the Hayti Heritage Film Festival. 

“The topic itself and the journey of the banjo have a lot of southern roots, so I thought that Hayti would be a really good fit,” Bailey said. 

Also featured is filmmaker Martine Granby. Her nonfiction film “Same Water” is a collection of archival home videos and research surrounding Florida’s Paradise Park. Located a mile down the river from Silver Springs State Park, Paradise Park was the segregated waterpark for Black families in the 1950s and 60s. 

As Granby continued to learn more, it became clear that she had found the subject of her film. “Same Water” wrestles with the idea of leisure at sites of segregation and its impact on communities. 

“I want to shine a light on things that grew from that, that were brilliant, and beautiful and joyous,” Granby said, referring to racism’s legacy in Paradise Park and around the world.

Granby started by compiling her own footage from a trip she took to the waterpark with her grandparents when she was seven. For additional research, Granby collaborated with Cynthia Wilson-Graham, an author who wrote a book on the waterpark.

“My hope with the film is that it’s as informative as one should be when you’re handling a history that is both yours but isn’t, because I’m not from Florida,” Granby said. “It was really important that I work with someone that not only had knowledge of the park, but who had roots there.”  

Each independent film at the Hayti Heritage Film Festival will be paired and shown with a feature film that holds similar themes. “Same Water” premieres with “Daughters of the Dust”, while “Songs of Reclamation” will be shown as part of the festival’s Musical Moments after “The Wiz.” 

Festival marketing lead, Ashley Strahm, says the decision to pair independent and feature films celebrates the homegrown and hardworking people that the Hayti community has always represented. Strahm says she could not help but get excited at Marshall’s pitch. The theme “Classic. Creature. Comforts” was the start of the festival’s narrative. 

“She came to me and was like, ‘We have to extrapolate on this,’” Strahm said. “She’s so incredible at isolating the timeliness and the historical significance of this moment.” 

What began as a simple idea quickly grew into an entire narrative philosophy: think less red carpet, more living room. The festival invites attendees to come as they are and be a part of something familiar.

“I think it’s kind of a nod to this idea that Black community in particular really deserves to feel comfortable, cared for and connected at this present moment,” Strahm said. “Hayti has been a community linchpin for that kind of connection and care for decades.” 

Marshall said the event is meant to be more than just a festival; it is also a community-building moment. 

“I think that art is always the place that continues to remind us that we are so much more the same than we are different. Not just now, but also across time,” Marshall said. 

The Hayti Heritage Film Festival will be held at the Hayti Heritage Center, located on Old Fayetteville Street in Durham. Single movie tickets, day passes or an all-access pass for the four-day event are available for purchase through the center’s website. 

Edited by Olivia Jarman