For 11 years, Harlem Stage On Screen has used independent filmmaking to define the ethnic identity of a neighborhood in transition and delineate the cultural borders and forces beyond it. Though the series has a specific mission — to present works that “convey the spirit and passion of communities of color”— the films themselves incorporate a broad range of artistic ambitions. This year’s program, which runs through the weekend, blends 36 films, ranging from five-minute narrative and experimental short films to feature-length documentaries and a multifilm celebration of the playwright and activist Lorraine Hansberry.

Between the Tribeca Film Festival at one end of the year and the New York Film Festival at the other, it seems not a month goes by without one city venue or another posting corporate sponsorship banners, printing up schedules, firing up a projector, and rolling out the red carpet. But within the New York area’s current film festival gold rush, Harlem Stage On Screen remains unique. What separates it from higher visibility programs are the collective creative voices of the series’ individual filmmakers and the singular curatorial focus that gathers them.

Harlem Stage On Screen was formerly known as the Harlem Film Festival. Distinguishing this annual program from its more sponsorship and film-count-heavy downtown neighbors is less a matter of “what’s in a name” as it is “what’s in a name change.”

“We changed our name because we had a lot of issues with calling it a festival,” the series curator, Michelle Materre, said. “By calling it a festival, people are concerned that we’re trying to compete with places like Tribeca and Sundance.”

But Harlem Stage on Film is neither a marketplace nor a full-scale showcase juggernaut steaming toward awards night. “This is not a competition,” Ms. Materre said. “It’s a screening event defined by the films themselves.”

The curatorial process involved in selecting and programming the films is as defining as the works chosen. Through a network of professional and personal associations, Ms. Materre and her producing partner in the series, Neyda Martinez, keep a close watch not just on the festival trends that online resources like Indiewire try to train-spot, but on emerging filmmakers.

Launched in 1997 as a program featuring only shorts, Harlem Stage On Screen retains seven individual “programmatic themed” feature-length compendiums of shorter works along with feature film screenings. Program III, titled “There’s No Place Like Home,” for instance, combines short documentaries with narrative films about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, gentrification of urban neighborhoods, and the recent return of many black families form Northern cities to Southern states as a way to examine the differences between displacement and migration.

One of the highlights of Program VI, called “The Ties That Bind,” is Nanobah Becker’s “Conversion.” A beautifully shot short film, “Conversion” is a kind of ethnographic cautionary tale placing Native American ritual in a mainstream context while portraying Christian evangelical dogma as superstition. The film was well received at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where there has always been strong support for Native American filmmaking. But Ms. Becker and her film appeared on the Harlem Stage On Screen radar because she is a member of the local artistic community, not simply as an applicant.

Through their affiliations with New York Women in Film and Television and other organizations that support home grown filmmaking, Ms. Materre and Ms. Martinez identify and track films and artists that are good fits for their program.

“I met her at a social gathering,” Ms. Martinez said of Ms. Becker. “An informal film slam developed out of that. Filmmakers wound up showing each other their work. I was impressed by what I saw.”

Harlem Stage On Screen’s closing tribute to “A Raisin in the Sun” had a similarly incubated genesis. Its author, Lorraine Hansberry (1930–65), was a controversial figure both in the black community and within the drama circles of her day. Dead of cancer at 35, she was a tragic figure by anyone’s standard.

“I have been working with a filmmaker named Hilary Strain on a documentary on Lorraine Hansberry,” Ms. Materre said. “This is a work in progress, and though I really wanted to use this film, I really didn’t know what I was going to use with it. Al Santana, another filmmaker friend and colleague of ours had recently done a new film, but I didn’t know what the subject matter was. It turns out that it’s a really interesting combination of documentary and narrative called ‘One People,’ about two sisters, a documentary filmmaker and a poet. The documentary filmmaker is doing a film about Lorraine Hansberry.”

By interpolating actual interview footage with actress Ruby Dee and others who knew and worked with Hansberry into a fictional story dealing with black creative expression, “One World” offers a personalized and contemporary reflection on the continued relevance of Hansberry’s work. “It goes to show you how alive her work remains,” Ms. Materre said. With a television adaptation of Sean Combs’s recent Broadway revival of “Raisin” around the corner, Ms. Materre chose to fill out the Hansberry program with excerpts from director Bill Duke’s little-seen 1989 television version of Hansberry’s play, introduced by its Emmy-winning producer, Chiz Schultz.

New York’s big marquee film festivals require multiple venues and simultaneous screenings to accommodate all the pictures they show. But from the name on down, Harlem Stage On Screen is tied to a single unique venue. This will be the first year that the series will be presented at the Gatehouse, Harlem Stage’s new headquarters. A former pumping station for the Croton reservoir, this spectacular 1890s Romanesque castle has been completely redone as a multi-use performance space hosting Harlem Stage’s full season of musical and dance performance. And now film.

“Harlem Stage On Screen has been a once a year film program,” Ms. Materre said. “One of the things we’ve been hoping for is to have more of an ongoing yearlong presence. I think now we can do that with the Gatehouse.”

Through Sunday (150 Convent Ave. at West 135th Street, 212-650-7100).