Steven Caple Jr. and Yvette Nicole Brown will be honored at the Micheaux Film Festival in Los Angeles, California. The multitalented creatives follow in the footsteps of Ernest Dickerson and Brenda Gilbert, who were both honored at last year’s festival. This year, Caple Jr. will receive the Oscar Micheaux Trailblazer of Excellence Award and Brown will be presented with the Michael Ajakwe Pioneer of Influence Award on July 16, 2023.
Caple Jr. is a Cleveland-born director best known for his contributions to Creed II. More recently, he led Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, starring Dominique Fishback, Anthony Ramos and Tobe Nwigwe. Additionally, he directed two episodes of Grown-ish and Machine Gun Kelly’s “Dopeman” music video in 2017.
Like Caple Jr., Brown is also a Cleveland-born talent. The actress has appeared in a number of iconic television series, including Girlfriends, Community, That 70s Show, Malcolm and the Middle, Entourage and The Office. Not to mention, she has appeared in Dreamgirls, Avengers: Endgame and Tropic Thunder.
Based in the film capital of the country, the Micheaux Film Festival is “a BIPOC and multicultural film festival that showcases and celebrates diverse representation in the entertainment and media landscape.”
“We are a festival in living color, inclusive, intersectional, and disruptive. We offer a cutting-edge and fresh take on the traditional festival experience and bring independent creatives together to curate an environment for artists to build sincere relationships with future collaborators in the television, film, media, and digital space,” a statement from the festival reads.
Over the years, the festival has hosted sold-out screenings of Issa Rae’s breakout HBO series, Insecure, and worked alongside organizations like the Emma Bowen Foundation and Oprah Winfrey Network. This year’s festival will feature the premiere of Gran Turismo, starring Archie Madekwe.
