From the Globe News Desk

Film stars and jazz musicians, restaurant owners and community activists, artists and authors are all mourning the death of well-known public relations specialist and event planner Ave Montague.
    For more than 30 years Montague was an integral part of the Bay Area community, especially San Francisco’s Fillmore District. Some considered her the unofficial mayor of the Fillmore because of all the time and work she devoted to its renovation and the preservation of its cultural traditions.
    Montague died on Friday of natural causes. She was 64 years old.
    Never content with the status quo, Montague was a mover and shaker in social, artistic and nonprofit realms. Just days before her death, she saw one of her greatest visions realized with the successful execution of Inauguration West, a West Coast celebration of the historic inauguration of President Barack Obama.
    True to her passionate concern for charitable organizations, a portion of the proceeds from Inauguration West were dedicated to several nonprofit groups including Urban Kidz Films, a subsidiary of the San Francisco Black Film Festival.
    After graduating with a degree in marketing from New York’s prestigious Fashion Institute of Technology, Montague joined the executive training program at Macy’s and became one of the first African American senior executives in the corporation’s history.
    In 1988 she launched Ave Montague and Associates, the independent events and public relations business that expanded over the years to include a wide range of artistic, social and cultural enterprises. Montague represented a broad spectrum of artists, filmmakers and authors as well as rising small business professionals and progressive corporate clients.
    In 1998 Montague was asked to present a film series as part of the Fillmore District’s Juneteenth Festival. The exhilaration of this experience, coupled with the decline of Oakland’s Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, fueled her desire to develop a San Francisco Bay Area film festival dedicated to positive images of African Americans.
    That same year Montague founded the San Francisco Black Film Festival and became its executive director. Operating with only a small budget and a passion for film, she grew the festival from a one-day event attended by 300 people to an eight-day megafilm- festival with many thousands attending a diverse program of films from throughout the African Diaspora.
    Montague curated and/or presented many other film festivals including Knoxville’s first black film festival, the 2007 Stanford Reel Black Film Festival and the San Francisco International Arts Festival Film Series. Her increasing regard for the cultural importance of documenting, preserving and interpreting the creative contributions of black filmmakers led her to amass a significant archive of black films that she made available to private collectors, educators and schools. She dubbed the enterprise “amvideos.com.”
    Montague’s desire to provide positive role models for the African American community and her commitment to education prompted her to found the African American Speakers’ Bureau and to serve on the advisory board of WritersCorp, a program for young writers sponsored by the San Francisco Arts Commission. She was also a founding board member of Friends of Faith, an organization dedicated to educating women of color about the importance of early detection and treatment of breast cancer.
    She was a former co-chair of the Bay Area Black Journalists Association and served as vice president of the board of directors for the San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin county YWCA. She also served on the Community Benefits District Board for the Fillmore Jazz Preservation District.
    Montague’s determination and innovative promotional campaigns garnered celebrity patronage, corporate support and record-breaking attendance at countless cultural events for the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, Dimensions Dance Theater, Lorraine Hansberry Theater, Fillmore Jazz District Promotions, Center for the Arts at Yerba Buena Gardens, Black Coalition on AIDS, TV One, Omega Boys Club, Starbucks Urban Coffee Opportunities, Museum of the African Diaspora, Yoshi’s San Francisco, Restaurant 1300 on Fillmore, Urban Solutions, UCSF Medical Center and many others.
    In 2007 Montague received the Entrepreneur of the Year award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Oakland Bay Area Chapter. In February 2008 she was honored with the Kuumba Award for Excellence in the Arts, and received the “Business Woman of the Year” award from the San Francisco Business and Professional Women’s Club in 1994. In 2000 the National African American Youth Summit honored Montague for her outstanding work with young people.
    Montague is survived by one son, Kali Ray, a grandson, Kali Ray Jr., both of Atlanta, and a granddaughter, Cree Ray of Tracy. Funeral arrangements are pending.