Three years ago, the nation reached a boiling point. People saw Texan George Floyd die a slow death with a Minneapolis police officer’s knee on his neck. It brought up past injustices and issues of racial inequality back into the national conversation and into the streets in numerous protests.
It was that environment that inspired Marcus Baskerville, co-owner and director of brewing operations at San Antonio’s Weathered Souls Brewing Co., to launch an initiative of positivity using beer.
“You reach that point where I felt like enough was enough, but what could I do in the space that I have? You know, I just make beer for a living. And I’m in a predominately Caucasian industry. So, what can I do?” Baskerville says in the new documentary “Black is Beautiful: Short Film.”
What he did was start a localized fundraising effort that spanned the globe and put hundreds of thousands of dollars into the coffers of hundreds of non-profits seeking social justice.
The Black is Beautiful initiative started with a recipe for a bold 10% alcohol-by-volume imperial stout of the same name. Baskerville then shared the recipe and the label design with any brewery that wanted to make it as long as they dedicated proceeds from the sale of the beer to local or national non-profit organizations supporting equality and inclusion or reform against filmpolice brutality.
That effort is now the subject of a documentary by filmmaker Marco Ortega and his San Antonio-based Flagship Video Works. The film was shown earlier this month to an international audience of brewing professionals gathered in Nashville for the Craft Brewers Conference and BrewExpo put on each year by the Brewers Association.
It is now entered in dozens of film festival competitions in the U.S. and around the world.
The film is sure to resonate beyond North American borders in the same way that the original brewing project did. Black is Beautiful was brewed by more than 1,200 breweries in all 50 states and 22 countries.
There were 123 breweries in Texas that made the beer including two Boerne breweries: Tusculum Brewing Co. and the now defunct Silber Brewing Co.
Black is Beautiful got attention from local media before spreading to the national stage including the New York Times.
The film about the phenomenon had a sold-out free screening at the end of March in San Antonio, but it may be some time before the public can get a look at it. Competitive film festivals have some pretty specific rules about where and how films can be shown while making the festival circuit.
Ortega’s 2016 film on the San Antonio scene, “Brewed in the 210,” went through the same process at the time, but then had plenty of free screenings with plenty of beer around the city after winning numerous festival awards. (You can find that documentary in full at vimeo.com/marcoortega). Until that time, enjoy the trailer for the new documentary at blackisbeautifulfilm. com.
Travis E. Poling has been writing about Texas beer for 25 years and is co-author of two books on the subject including “San Antonio Beer: Alamo City History by the Pint.” Email him at BeerAcrossTexas@ att.net
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