2nd Annual Festival · May 23, 2026
Redefining · Excellence · For · Representation · Amplifying · Minority · Innovation · Narratives · Global Cinema. The 2nd Annual REFRAMING Cinema Film Festival — Saturday, May 23, 2026 — at the LITE Center in Lafayette.
What REFRAMING Means
The Program
REFRAMING Cinema is a film festival in its second year — a deliberate act of curation, putting Black, Creole, Indigenous, and underrepresented Louisiana storytellers on the screen first, in front of audiences who were always supposed to be the audience.
The festival is powered by Vues de Culture. The work of preservation is not only about what we film. It is about who sees the film, and where. A documentary screened only at prestige venues in major cities does not reach the people it was made for. REFRAMING Cinema changes that — once a year, in Lafayette, free of the gatekeeping that’s kept these stories out of the rooms they belong in.
The Framework
Every screening starts with the question: who is this for? Programming decisions are made with Black Louisiana audiences as the primary consideration — not as an afterthought.
Churches, community centers, neighborhood spaces, school gymnasiums. Film belongs in the places where people actually live — not only in institutions that require travel and ticket costs to access.
A commitment to films made in and about the American South — with particular attention to Louisiana, Acadiana, and Black communities whose stories have been systematically underfunded and underscreened.
Every screening is an event. Filmmakers, community members, and cultural workers in conversation — not a Q&A format imported from the festival world, but a real exchange about the work and the culture it documents.
May 23, 2026 · LITE Center, Lafayette
Doors: 9:30 AM · morning bites (kolaches, donuts, boudin, coffee)
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Block 1 · Six Shorts + Feature Closer
Followed by 25-minute Q&A with the filmmakers.
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Lunch · Russell’s Catering
1:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Block 2 · Short + Feature