As AFRAM celebrates 50 years, a new documentary is preserving the legacy of one of the country’s largest African American festivals on the East Coast while honoring Baltimore as a city where Black culture, creativity and storytelling thrive.

The Baltimore AFRAM Festival, presented by the Mayor’s Office of Arts Culture and Entertainment and Baltimore City Recreation and Parks, is a celebration of African American life, music and culture. Held over two days at Druid Hill Park during Juneteenth weekend, the family-oriented festival features entertainers, children’s activities, arts, history, education, health and wellness programming, and more.

At the center of the documentary project are three Baltimore creatives and cultural leaders: Maya Gilmore, Executive Director, Mayor’s Office of Cable & Communications; Tia Goodson, Chief Marketing and Programs Officer at Create Baltimore; and Alexandria Queen-Sneed, Executive Producer and Founder of Create and Serve Media Group. Together, they are helping shape AFRAM 50: A Celebration of Us, a film rooted in legacy, memory and the belief that Baltimore should tell its own stories.

For Gilmore, the documentary began with a simple but urgent idea: AFRAM’s 50th anniversary needed to be documented. The festival’s golden anniversary represented more than a number. It was a chance to preserve the voices, images and memories of the people who built and sustained the celebration for five decades.

“This free festival has sustained for five decades,” Gilmore said. “It represents the resilience of the city.”

Gilmore said the project reflects a larger belief that Baltimore stories should be told by Baltimore people. Without that intentional documentation, pieces of the city’s history can disappear.

“If we don’t document these things and capture the history of our elders and the people who were here from the beginning, we’ll lose it,” Gilmore said.

That vision grew through collaboration. Gilmore and Goodson, whose agencies regularly work together, began shaping the idea and quickly realized they needed a filmmaker who could carry the project with both technical skill and cultural care. Queen-Sneed became that person.

A Baltimore native, Queen-Sneed is an NAACP Image Award-winning and Emmy-nominated producer whose work spans unscripted television, specials and cultural storytelling. Through Create and Serve Media Group, her Baltimore-based production company, she focuses on growing the local entertainment ecosystem through premium production and workforce development.

For Queen-Sneed, AFRAM is not just another festival. It is a living reflection of Baltimore’s identity.

“AFRAM is important because it literally is this consistent celebration of us,” Queen-Sneed said. “We have a culture that is rich in legacy but also rich in evolution. We are constantly creating culture as a people, and I think AFRAM is constantly creating space to highlight that in the city.”

The documentary includes interviews, archival footage and first-person stories from different generations. Queen-Sneed said audiences will not only learn about AFRAM’s history, but also feel the weight of what it means for the festival to have lasted 50 years.

In researching the film, Queen-Sneed was especially moved by early AFRAM booklets. She found that the programs were not simply schedules of performers. They included mission statements, dedications, timelines, and histories of Black life in Maryland and Baltimore.

“It was just so intentional the way that the story of us was woven into the entertainment and the coming together,” Queen-Sneed said. “Seeing how much intentionality was behind it moved me.”

For Goodson, that sense of gathering is central to the documentary’s purpose. She said AFRAM continues a legacy of community at a time when people can feel increasingly disconnected from one another.

“I think it’s really important that we remember a time where getting together was ingrained in us,” Goodson said.

Goodson also pointed to the collaboration behind the documentary as part of a larger Baltimore story. The project shows what is possible when city agencies, city-funded organizations and local creatives move in alignment. She said she and Gilmore learned early that their organizations were stronger when they worked together for the benefit of the city.

The film also highlights Baltimore as a safe haven for artists and creatives, particularly creatives of color. Goodson said Baltimore has long been a place where artists can develop ideas, build community and create meaningful work.

“Baltimore has been that city for a while,” Goodson said. “It’s been a place where artists, where creatives of color in particular could incubate, ideate and create. We’re finding that artists are feeling safe in this city.”

The documentary is also significant because of who is leading it. Goodson noted that the team is majority women and majority Black women, an important fact in a film and television industry that remains largely male-led. Queen-Sneed added that women are not only visible at the top of the project, but throughout the production team, including producing, archives, coordination, graphics, editing, behind-the-scenes work and social media.

The project also draws on Baltimore’s archival and cultural institutions, including the University of Baltimore Archives and the Eubie Blake Cultural Center. The team explored the work of photographer Robert Breck Chapman, whose documentation of Black life in Baltimore helped preserve key pieces of AFRAM’s visual history.

For Queen-Sneed, the goal is for viewers to leave proud and curious.

“I hope they feel really proud of the city that they’re in and that they’re from,” she said. “I hope people feel an urgency to go talk to their grandparents, to go talk to their aunts and their uncles and learn more.”

At its heart, AFRAM 50: A Celebration of Us is more than a documentary about a festival. It is a story about a city that gathers, remembers and creates. It is Baltimore, telling Baltimore’s story.