27th Roxbury International Film Festival centers community and connection

Jamaican-born and Boston-raised, the versatile character actor Frank Silvera played countless roles of wildly varying ethnicities. He co-starred as the treacherous General Huerta, who betrayed Marlon Brando and killed Anthony Quinn in “Viva Zapata,” before showing up a few years later as one of Brando’s Tahitian pals in “Mutiny on the Bounty.” After playing Mexican bandits opposite Paul Newman in “Hombre” and Clint Eastwood on “Rawhide,” Silvera was a ton of Italian gangsters, most notably in “The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre” and Stanley Kubrick’s 1955 sophomore effort “Killer’s Kiss.” In the latter, he became the first Black actor to kiss a white actress in a major Hollywood film, and the kind of people who used to get upset about such things didn’t even notice.

But Silvera’s first love was the theater. A member of The Actors Studio, he once co-starred as the Italian father to characters played by Ben Gazzara and Anthony Franciosa in the Broadway play “A Hatful of Rain,” where he was said to have saved the job of a mouthy young understudy named Steve McQueen. In 1955, Silvera started the Theatre of Being Workshop, using his television and movie earnings to fund productions starring Black actors. After his passing in 1970, friend Morgan Freeman co-founded the Frank Silvera Writers’ Workshop. A close colleague of Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier, Silvera was a mentor to many. But Lisa and Alison Simmons, the artistic directors and programmers of the Roxbury International Film Festival, knew him as Uncle Frank.

“He was family. Isn’t that cool?” said Lisa Simmons over the phone from RoxFilm headquarters. “As you go about your life and your career, you do things because you’re passionate about them. Then you’re like, ‘Oh wait, my relatives did this like 50 years ago!’ Uncle Frank’s focus was supporting Black actors and I guess we’re following in his footsteps.”

That’s why this year’s 27th annual Roxbury International Film Festival will be holding a tribute to Silvera on Thursday, June 26 at MassArt, with the actor’s daughter (and the Simmons sisters’ cousin) Linda Silvera in attendance. It’s one of the dozens of events, panels, workshops and hangouts over the 10 days from Thursday, June 19 through Friday, June 27 showcasing more than a hundred shorts and features at an array of venues including Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Dudley Street’s historic Hibernian Hall and Roxbury’s Haley House. As always with RoxFilm, the emphasis is on community and interaction. Every evening ends with a filmmaker hangout, where artists, friends and fans can rub elbows, ask questions and foster fellowship — a commodity that feels especially precious in these tempestuous times.

“There’s so much that just hurts my heart,” Simmons said. “We talk a lot about arts as activism. How can you use arts and culture to help people understand and get connected to certain issues? I think film is a great way to do that. We always talk about film as a catalyst for conversation and we have built into the festival opportunities to have deeper discussions around these film screenings. We’re bringing in people from organizations that are doing work in these spaces to do Q&As with the community.”

RoxFilm’s much-loved “Dinner and a Movie” program returns this year to Haley House with a screening of “The Ebony Canal: A Story of Black Infant Mortality” (June 23), followed by a conversation with maternal health professionals. “I think we need to be constantly talking about this issue, especially when we’re looking at cuts in health care and the loss of hospitals and health centers,” explained Simmons. “This is very much an issue that’s front and center for Black and brown people, and this is a great film narrated by Viola Davis that talks about ways in which people are trying to counter this terrible situation.”

They’ve also brought back last year’s hugely successful Senior Lunch Screening (June 24). “This was my sister Alison, the co-director’s brainchild. We would get questions about bringing these films to the senior communities, so she asked, ‘Why don’t we do a free lunch for the seniors in Boston? Anyone really can come, but the focus is to provide an opportunity for senior citizens to come out and have a discussion and we’ll provide box lunches for them,” Simmons said. “It was a great success last year. The filmmaker was over the moon having this audience.”

This year, they’re screening the acclaimed documentary “Harriet Tubman | From the Railroad to a Spy” as well as a locally filmed dramatic short called “Sweet Freedom,” about an Underground Railroad station master. Kyera Singleton, executive director of the Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, will be there for the post-film conversation.

Weekday afternoons during the festival, you can tune into an online reading of an unproduced script by local writers, performed by local actors. It’s a tradition that started out during the pandemic and they’ve kept it going as a fun way to introduce area talent to a wider audience. Unfortunately, that’s the only online offering this year, due to platform problems and scheduling issues.

“We’re hoping to do a RoxFilm Rewind in the fall or winter,” Simmons explained. “A lot of festivals aren’t doing online screenings anymore, but we feel really strongly about them because it’s an accessibility issue. We tend to have an older demographic and want to make sure we’re giving them an opportunity to see these films. The filmmakers have agreed to do it, it’s just an issue of when.”

It’s a crowded month. “You’ve got Black Pride, you’ve got Embrace [Ideas Festival], you’ve got RoxFilm, you’ve got BAMS Fest, a lot of things that are happening in June and all of us are making a concerted effort to work together and try and support each other,” Simmons said. This year, the film fest is collaborating with BAMS Fest on the closing documentary “May the Lord Watch” (June 27) about the North Carolina hip-hop duo Little Brother. “They’re going to be performing at BAMS Fest the following day, so you can see a film about them and they’ll be here to talk, then they’re performing there the next day.” It’s that kind of continuity that will hopefully keep the celebration going from one festival to another.

“We’re actually combining our closing night party with the BAMS Fest kickoff party at the Artists For Humanity school in South Boston,” Simmons said. “It’s a really cool rollover. There’s a lot going on and we’re all trying to not step on each other’s toes.”

Roxbury International Film Festival runs from Thursday, June 19 through Friday, June 27.