NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Supporters of black films are using a grassroots style of marketing to draw people to theaters and hopefully appease major studios hesitant to continue backing them if they don't do well at the box office.

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Hazel Joyner-Smith is executive director of the International Black Film Festival of Nashville, which will be held Oct. 15-19. She said one of the festival's objectives is to make studio executives aware of black films they may not know about and their potential for success.

"This is an opportunity for anyone who has a film to have movie executives come and take a look at those films," said Joyner-Smith, adding that the venue will feature actors, film and television producers, writers and industry professionals from across the United States and abroad.

Her effort, however, may be challenging. Hollywood has little enthusiasm for movies with predominantly black casts because they don't believe the general public will turn out to see them, critics say.

Rick Rosenberg, an executive producer of the Emmy award-winning movie "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" released in 1974, had such an experience recently. When he tried to pitch a movie that had a black person as the lead character, he was told it would probably be tough to sell the movie abroad.

"It's all about the money," said Rosenberg, who is white. "If they think they can make money, then they may do the movie."

It doesn't help when a black film does make it onto the big screen, but then performs poorly at the box office, as was the case with last year's "The Great Debaters," based on the real-life victories of a black college debating team in the 1930s.

The movie did not meet expectations, despite leading roles from Oscar-winners Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker, and financial help from Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Films.

"If you were to tell me about a film starring Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker and produced by Oprah, I would have bet my job that film was going to succeed," said Brett Dismuke, vice president of acquisition and urban programming for One Village Entertainment, a subsidiary of Image Entertainment in Chatsworth, Calif.

"From industry standards, it was a box office bomb," he said. Movie experts have said part of the film's failure was poor marketing, because it didn't even have a strong attendance of black people.

Tirrell Whittley, CEO and founder of Liquid Soul Media in Atlanta, Ga., said there's no excuse for black movies not to be supported by their own, which is why his marketing firm has developed a grassroots approach to getting people to fill the theaters.

"Our approach is a targeted approach that goes after your lifestyle ... in an unobtrusive way, so that you develop some level of association and even want to become an evangelist for our project," Whittley said. "And basically say, not only am I going to go see it, I'm going to tell 20 of my friends to go see the same film because I feel so strongly about it."

Leading up to last year's release of "Stomp the Yard" -- a movie centered around black college fraternities -- Liquid Soul Media launched marketing campaigns at some of the football games of historically black colleges that included showing trailers of the film on Jumbotrons and placing ads in program booklets.

The strategy helped make "Stomp the Yard" No. 1 at the box office for two weeks and landed Whittley's company even more business from major studios -- such as Sony and Universal -- now willing to take a chance on black movies because of Whittley's marketing style.

His grassroots approach helped make "Lakeview Terrace," which was released last month and starring Samuel L. Jackson, a top box office hit, and he hopes to do the same with this past weekend's release of "The Express," a story about the first African-American Heisman Trophy winner.

Like Whittley, movie mogul Tyler Perry has also found success with his own niche marketing. His latest film, "Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys," has grossed more than $35 million at the box office since its release several weeks ago.

Perry recently celebrated the grand opening of his own studio facility, Tyler Perry Studios, the first major television and movie studio owned and operated by an African-American film producer.

When the black film festival kicks off in Nashville this week, Joyner-Smith hopes the films to be showcased will benefit from the nontraditional style of marketing.

"The grassroots approach is very effective," she said. "People are letting us know what films they want."