‘Costs almost doubled’: Longstanding Black film festival leaves Miami Beach

The American Black Film Festival, which has long history in Miami Beach, is relocating to Los Angeles, citing increasing hotel and production costs in South Florida. The festival, which celebrated its 30th edition this year, has been a fixture in South Florida for more than two decades.

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“The event costs really escalated beyond the point where it was sustainable for us since COVID,” co-founder Jeff Friday told the Herald. “It does kind of limit people’s capacity to get there, particularly independent filmmakers, and that’s our core audience. Our specific production costs almost doubled since 2019. This really became cost prohibitive for us. It just wasn’t a sustainable model.”

The festival has long been a launch pad for Black filmmakers and storytellers and provides opportunities for master classes, networking and independent film screenings. The past festival highlighted the career of actress Regina King and spotlighted upcoming shows like the “A Different World” revival set to air on Netflix on Sept. 24.

Friday said because the Regal Cinema on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach had closed last year, the festival had to construct its own theaters inside the Miami Beach Convention Center for film screenings.

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“Building a movie theater is very, very expensive: the chairs, the projection equipment. People don’t realize how much it takes,” he said. “When you go to the movies, you don’t really think about the projection and the sound and the lighting. But all those things are very important to the moviegoing experience.”

The festival will now be held in Los Angeles, where Friday’s production company, which he co-founded with his wife Nicole, NICE CROWD is headquartered.

ABFF’s move was formally announced last week, but Friday said he gave Miami Beach mayor and the local tourism agency Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau notice weeks ago. In a statement, the GMCVB thanked ABFF for its longstanding relationship with the bureau and Miami Beach.

“While we will certainly miss welcoming the signature event, we understand and respect the decision to begin a new chapter and new experiences,” said GMCVB senior vice president of destination engagement Connie W. Kinnard. “Relationships like this extend well beyond a location, and we remain open to consider collaborations in the future. Miami will always consider ABFF part of our cultural and creative family.”

ABFF’s move comes at a time when hotel occupancy has declined as rates have increased in Miami Beach. According to , hotel occupancy was down nearly 3% in May compared to last year. Hotel room rates in Miami Beach, however, increased year-over-year with the average daily rate being $329 in May compared to $283 last May.

“Miami, if you look back historically, was a sun and fun leisure destination. It’s turned into a higher-end, cosmopolitan, luxury destination, and that’s not only for visitors. That’s also cost of living. That’s also cost of real estate,” said Peter Ricci, clinical associate professor and director of Florida Atlantic University’s Hospitality and Tourism Management Program.

Ricci noted the film festival is held in the “shoulder period,” a transitional period when demand tends to taper off.

Ricci said typically, when you have an organization that has successfully held an event in a city for more than 20 years, the community would want to do something to help them stay. But on the other hand, he said tourism promotion professionals favor higher hotel rates.

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“There’s nothing better than being the highest-rated hotel rates in the state because it brings in a more affluent traveler,” he said. “It brings more money to owners. It brings higher types of brands, and so on and so forth.”

Daniel Foreman, a hospitality intelligence analyst with hotel-data platform Lighthouse, said Miami Beach is a more costly option than Los Angeles, but not by much.

His data shows only nominal differences in room rates in the two markets: From May 20-23, when this year’s festival was held, the average daily room rate in the Los Angeles metro area was $250 per night and $226 for the city of Los Angeles. By comparison, it rates were $286 per night in Miami Beach although Miami-Dade County and Miami would cost $246 and $220 per night, respectively.

Foreman said Miami’s inventory likely also played a role given Miami’s market has a lot of premium inventory spread across many smaller hotels. On average, he said, Los Angeles has about 20% more hotel rooms than Miami.

“A group block is a much bigger inventory commitment for a small hotel,” Foreman said. “A 25-room block is a far bigger ask for a 50-room property than for a 250-room one, so Miami Beach hotels have less room to discount blocks in the first place.”

As for the decreased occupancy rate, Foreman said it just means hoteliers are comfortable with lower occupancy if the guest pays more.

Friday was clear the move had nothing to do with Florida’s recent anti-DEI legislation, Senate Bill 1134, that will go into effect next year and prohibits municipalities from providing local funding for groups or services tied to gender, race or sexual orientation.

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Friday believed the festival’s presence defied those state level anti-DEI restrictions and noted they were receiving support from Miami Beach and the GMCVB. “We were proud to do it there because in a certain way we were resisting the resistance,” he said. “I think sometimes when these types of things happen in our society, it’s really important to stand your ground and that’s kind of how we looked at it.”

But Friday hasn’t ruled out a return to the Miami area in the future, perhaps as one of its pop-up ABFF sites.

“It’s just the economy,” he said. “The economics just didn’t work, and we would consider coming back in the future if something were to change.”

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