The African American Film Critics Association has partnered with Los Angeles City Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson to present the inaugural AAFCA Day at City Hall on April 27, the two announced on Monday.
The day will aim to celebrate film and TV projects that show Los Angeles and its residents through complex and original depictions. This year, USA limited series “Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and The Notorious B.I.G.” will be honored, with cast members and collaborators from the show set to gather with the city council on Friday.
“‘Unsolved,’ by showing a full L.A., from areas very familiar to tourists to those known only to natives, is certainly exemplary,” Gil Robertson, president of the AAFCA, said in a statement. “In addition to showcasing the notable landscape of the city and the larger metro area, the limited series offers provocative depictions of life in L.A. not often seen or heard elsewhere. The limited series gave opportunities to new actors while also allowing veteran actors to show their range in roles in which others may not have cast them.”
He continued, “AAFCA is pleased to join City Hall in recognizing ‘Unsolved’ for highlighting the city and the community at large more multi-dimensionally than numerous other productions. It is our hope that AAFCA Day at City Hall will go a long way in encouraging other stories and productions on the scale of ‘Unsolved’ that render deeper and more complex portraits of Los Angeles as a whole.”
The series, which premiered in February, explored the decade-long investigation into the murders of Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G, along with a dive into the culture and diversity of Los Angeles at the time.
“As with my experience working on ‘The Wire’ (Baltimore), ‘Treme’ (New Orleans) and ‘The People vs. O.J. Simpson’ (Los Angeles), ‘Unsolved’ also aimed for realism in depicting its city truthfully and accurately,” executive producer Anthony Hemingway said. “Because the realistic human qualities portrayed of the city through the faces, voices, real life events that inspire and drive ‘Unsolved’ are wrapped around L.A., we couldn’t tell this story successfully without being here. There is a unique character and vibrancy to L.A. that cannot be substituted.”
