SIMON BENJAMIN in Film

BCC is proud to be a sponsoring partner for the Jacob Lawrence Gallery Legacy Artist in Residence, Simon Benjamin.

A series of screening programs will support the artist’s exhibition, A BOLT FROM THE BLUE, with a community screening at Wa Na Wari Seattle, and part of the UNION project with Photographic Center NW and Capitol Hill Arts District.

Exhibition is open from Weds April 3rd to April 20th, 2024

Partnered programs begin on April 7th.

All supporting events are in partnership with the Jacob Lawrence Legacy Residency program, and organized by Guest Curator Berette S Macaulay.

Sunday Dinner, Sunday Pie, Sunday Roast, Sunday Greens, Sunday Rice and Peas, Sunday at Grandma’s house.  Throughout the African diaspora we share traditions of Sunday dinners, a special mid-late afternoon gathering around slow cooked food, donning our Sunday best after worship at church.  Historically it was the time when families, neighbors, and friends, would take the time to check in with community kin and leaders, honoring our elders as they guide the younger generations through games, recipes, and storytelling. Sunday was the time to gather and to give thanks, as we transition from the work of last week, into the possibilities of the new one to come. 

Simon Benjamin, a Jamaican born artist based in New York, makes work about the colonial legacies that impact Afro-diasporic peoples and traditions through the lens of the Caribbean.  On his first visit to Seattle as the 2024 Jacob Lawrence Gallery Legacy Artist-in-Residence, he is discovering new cultural intersections in the Pacific Northwest.  Coastal traditions and histories of movement and migration impact the traditions we keep, or how they evolve, and the interconnections we find along the way.  For this Sunday Dinner engagement we will gather in ease with Simon for a select screening of his short films, enjoy some warm sustenance and story sharing traditions before we transition into another week.

FILMS

Two Score Full Moon, (2019)

1 m, 52 s, HD Video

An ode to entropy on the occasion of a full moon in Jamaica.

The Memory Held Within Water (2022)

6 m, 55 s

The film is inspired by Haitian sculptor, Jean Claude Saintilus’ story about the ancient water well in his yard in Grand Rue, Port Au-Prince, that connects him to his ancestors and notions of home.

Previous screenings: Two-Channel Film from a site specific installation in the context of documenta fifteen, 2022.

On Childhood, (2019)

1 m, 42 sec

Inspired by an audio recording of a jovial conversation between Zimbabwean literary giants Chenjerai Hove and Charles Mungoshi. The poetic visual responds to the writer’s unraveling of memory and commentary on cultural shifts in Zimbabwe since their childhood. The film was commissioned as a part of a cinematic addendum of the book “Some Writers Can Give Two Heartbeats” edited by Tinashe Mushakavanhu and designed by Nontsikelelo Mutiti of Black Chalk & Co.

Previous Screenings: Beautiful Words are Subversive at the Brooklyn Public Library

Errantry (2021)

1 m, Full HD

Named after Édouard Glissant’s theory, Errantry is centered on the polyphonic rhythms of coastal space, the Caribbean sea, and the life sustained by it in a non-linear narrative that raises questions about time, labor, environmental degradation and the ongoingness of colonialism.

Previous Screenings: REDCAT, doumenta fifteen: LUMBUNG FILM: IMMEDIACY, Third Horizon Film Festival, Kingston Biennial 2022, Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival

AUTODOOR, (2020)

3 m, HD Video

Experimental film comprised of still images and sound, set on a bus in Dakar, Senegal.

Previous Screenings: Ojos Caribe, Homework Gallery, Dec 7th, 2023. Press: C& America Latina

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About the Curator:

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PARTNERS:

LOCATION

Wa Na Wari Seattle

911 24th Avenue

Seattle, WA, 98122United States

Directed & Produced

by Bill T. Jones

and New York Live Arts​

Post show discussion moderated by BCC's Berette S Macaulay

OFF THE PAGE

Thurs, March 09, 2023

5:30 PM - 7:00 PM PST

at Northwest Film Forum

​

Off the Page will be an introductory, hands-on workshop highlighting non-traditional expressions of poetry. Participants will have a chance to experience animation poetry, embodied movement poetry, and video poetry in a lively, drop-in setting. Drink special: a poem-inspired specialty drink!

This program is sponsored by Black Cinema Collective and co-presented with Cadence Video Poetry Festival.

*Kamari Bright is an award winning poet, videopoet, and creative whose poetry and films have been published and screened widely from the United States to Germany.

www.kamaribright.com

NW Film Forum and *Kamari Bright present an offsite event of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Conference

Did you know the incisive and instructively brilliant Audre Lorde spent her last years in Germany?

Come celebrate her birthday weekend* with a screening of this very special documentary, which explores a little-known chapter of the writer’s prolific life.  

Dir. Dagmar Schultz (2012)

Germany, 79min

In English and German

(with English subtitles)

*Audre Lorde was born on Feb 18, 1934, and died Nov 17, 1992

FEBRUARY SCREENING SURPRISE!!

Audre Lorde – The Berlin Years 1984-1992

Grand Illusion Cinema

Sunday, Feb 19th​

2:00 pm matinee

7:30 pm evening

Film selection by Black Cinema Collective for screening at Grand Illusion Cinema - two orgs holding it down with labors of film love.

Join us for another iteration of BETWEEN THE FRAMES, a program of films in Redmond that uses visual storytelling to promote and deepen our understanding of different histories, traditions, and cultures.

These 2 short films, situated in the Afro-Latino and South Asian contexts are linked by themes of acceptance, self-love, and the complexities of the diasporic experience. They explore and disrupt the deep connections between internalized racial biases and colorism within/outside spaces of color.

Afterwards, there will be a moderated conversation with Dr. Diana Flores Ruíz, Assistant Professor in Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle.

This program was organized by Savita Krishnamoorthy 
Media design by @_chiledulce

About the Films & Artists

RIZO (2020, USA, 14:37 mins)
Directed by Jeanette Dilone
Produced by Jeanette Dilone & Andrew McLaren 

An Afro-Latina actress looking for her big break has her hopes dashed when things take a bad turn at an important audition.

JEANETTE DILONE is a native New Yorker, born and raised in Washington Heights, NYC. Though Jeanette's first passion was classical ballet, she fell in love with acting during her college years. Since then, her acting work has spanned television, film, theater, commercials, and new media. She made her directorial debut with the short film, "Return," which she also wrote and produced. It premiered at the NY Shorts International Film Festival and was acquired by Shorts TV. Her second short, "Rizo" (2020), which she wrote, produced, and directed, premiered at LALIFF and was one of the 2020 HBO Latinx Short Film Competition winners and is available to watch on HBOMax. In 2021, Jeanette became a recipient of the LALIFF Inclusion Fellowship, sponsored by Netflix. In 2022, her third short "Hoar", which she wrote, produced, and directed, premiered at LALIFF.

KAALA (2019, India, 15:24 mins) 
Directed by Tarun Jain
Produced by Nasira Khan 

A short socio-political film about the increasing issues of racism, specifically on hate crimes against African nationals that occurred in New Delhi, India in 2016 and 2017. 

TARUN JAIN is an acclaimed filmmaker from New Delhi, India. His short film, Amma Meri has screened in over 48 festivals including the Oscar Qualifying Tampere Film Festival, IFFI Goa, MIFF, IDSFFK, and Dharamshala, India. His latest film Kaala (2019) is based on the racist attacks on the Africans in New Delhi, India. Kaala (2019) had its world premiere at the Oscar Qualifying Cinequest Film and VR Festival in the USA and also played at Rapid Lion Film Festival in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was screened at the Coalition of South Asian Film Festivals (CoSAFF), a first of its kind event that brought together seven well-established South Asian film festivals across North America in 2020.

About the Moderator

About the Curator

SAVITA KRISHNAMOORTHY is an art historian, educator, organizer, and writer from India, based in Redmond, WA. Her writing publications include The Times of India, Feminist Media Histories (University of California Press), Courageous Creativity, Black Embodiment Studio Journal, and the International Examiner, where she is a regular contributor writing on arts and culture. She earned an MA in Art History (University of Bangalore, India), her MA in Cultural Studies (University of Washington) and received the 2019 Merit Award from the Alpha Kappa Alpha Foundation.

“I value the space between arts practice and community engagement. To affect change by facilitating conversations that shift the narratives on equity, access, and representation.”

The program is presented by Black Cinema Collective along with Centro Cultural Mexicano, with grants received from the Redmond Arts Seasons Grant (2021) and 4 Culture.

HERE + THERE, or frequencies of the everyday is a visual retelling of personal and creative responses to daily life in Colombia, Jamaica, and the UK.

Precious Hair & Beauty (2021, UK, 11 mins)

Directed by John Ogunmuyiwa; Produced by Sophia Gibber and Tony Longe

WALK GOOD (2021; South Africa, Jamaica; 13 mins)

Directed by Adriaan Louw and Roberto Colombo

Dulce (2019; USA, Colombia; 11 mins)

Directed by Angello Faccini and Guille Isa

This program was curated by Chile Dulce for Black Cinema Collective (BCC).

#blackcinemacollective #HERETHERE #fryeartmuseum

ABOUT THE FILMS + ARTISTS

|.   Precious Hair & Beauty (2021, UK, 11 mins)   

Directed by John Ogunmuyiwa; Produced by Sophia Gibber and Tony Longe

An ode to the mundanity and madness of the high street, told through the window of an African hair salon. It’s the everyday antics of a bustling high street

John Ogunmuyiwa is an award-winning Nigerian-born London-bred filmmaker who works in both documentary and fiction. His work draws upon a constant questioning of what it means to be normal. Using daily observations as a base, he tends to bring a tinge of surrealism into his work, all with the aim of telling untold stories from a different perspective. // IG + Twitter: @johnogunz

Sophia Gibber is a London/Rome-based producer who enjoys unique ways of exploring the familiar. Films she has produced include feature documentary MCKELLEN: PLAYING THE PART and BIFA-nominated debut feature THE BIKE THIEF for which she was also longlisted for Breakthrough Producer. Obsessed with true crime, she also co-created THE DOODLER hit podcast series with the San Francisco Chronicle and Sony Music, which was nominated for an OJA award. // IG: @sophiainrome | Twitter: @__sophia

Tony Longe began his career producing music videos with some of the biggest names in the music industry; from international artists like Davido, J Balvin & Future to homegrown talents like Westlife, Aitch & Wretch 32. He most recently produced Random Acts’ THE GIFT, which premiered on Film4, short APPRECIATION, which played at the 2019 BFI London Film Festival and Aesthetica Short Film Festival, and PRECIOUS HAIR& BEAUTY, which has been nominated for a BIFA. // IG + Twitter: @producerlonge

||.     WALK GOOD (2021; South Africa, Jamaica; 13 mins)   

Directed by Adriaan Louw and Roberto Colombo

A Patois expression wishing good fortune to a departing traveler, “Walk Good” is an abstract visual account of a Jamaican experience, documented through the lens of South African filmmakers.

Adriaan Louw is a South African-born filmmaker and photographer who began his career documenting collectives and communities across South Africa with a focus on music, skateboarding, and fashion. He regularly works with other major brands such as Adidas, Vans, Puma, Vogue and The Fader. His sensibility and talent for creating hypnotic and cinematic atmospheres has attracted work from international artists including Major Lazer, Wizkid, Jess Glynne, Mabel, Black Coffee and Riky Rick. His work in music has won a number of awards, including MTV Africa’s music video of the year for Riky Rick’s “Nafukwa”. // www.adriaanlouw.co  IG: @adriaanlouw1

Roberto Colombo // www.robertocolombo.tv | IG: @robocolo

|||.    Dulce (2019; USA, Colombia; 11 mins)

Directed by Angello Faccini and Guille Isa

In the coastal village of La Ensenada, Colombia, where digging for shellfish is a way of life, everyone must learn to swim eventually — even little Dulce. But as the effects of climate change, marked by swelling tides and shrinking coastlines, begin to threaten the village's livelihood, the carefree swimming lessons led by Dulce's mother take on a sense of urgency.

Angello Faccini was born in Bogotá, Colombia and studied filmmaking at ESCAC in Barcelona. He works as a filmmaker and cinematographer who actively balance narrative, documentary and commercial work. His short film DULCE (2018) released by NYT Op Docs was selected in Sundance, Toronto, IDFA, among other film festivals and won Best Documentary at Palm Springs Film Fest and Gran Prix at Tampere Film Festival. LAPÜ (2019) his first feature had its World Premiere at Sundance and the European Premiere at the Berlinale and won Best Cinematography at the Boston Film Festival. His latest feature film MILESTONE (2020) shot in India had its world premiere at the Orizzonti section at the Venice Internacional Film Festival.

Guille Isa is a documentary filmmaker based in Lima, Peru. Half Japanese, half Peruvian, Guille has spent most of his career working with and filming different cultures in South America. His films primarily explore planet Earth in all its diversity, spotlighting craft, culture, belief systems, as well as environmental issues. // www.guilleisa.com

AFTER DARK is an annual program that delves into the creative, spooky, and speculative world of horror and sci-fi storytelling. Witness how African + Black Diasporic filmmakers, writers, artists, and characters are contributing to the cult circuit while flipping the script on these mind-bending genres.

Join us for a series of watch parties with live commentary by special guests on contemporary Black horror featuring HIS HOUSE (2020, USA/UK, 93 mins), Directed by Remi Weekes, with special guests Isabella Price and Sade’ Sellers.

HOW TO WATCH

• Open Chrome + download the Scener extension

• Log-in to Scener.com or register a new account

• Visit Scener.com/blackcinemacltv to join the party via Netflix

For additional help, visit scener.com/faq

Organized and designed by Chile Dulce
Presented by Black Cinema Collective (BCC)

#blackcinemacollective #bccafterdark

ABOUT THE FILM + GUEST

HIS HOUSE (2020, USA/UK, 93 mins)
Directed by Remi Weekes

A refugee couple makes a harrowing escape from war-torn South Sudan, but then they struggle to adjust to their new life in an English town that has an evil lurking beneath the surface.

AFTER DARK is an annual program that delves into the creative, spooky, and speculative world of horror and sci-fi storytelling. Witness how African + Black Diasporic filmmakers, writers, artists, and characters are contributing to the cult circuit while flipping the script on these mind-bending genres.

Join us for a series of watch parties with live commentary by special guests on contemporary Black horror featuring SWEETHEART (2019, USA, 82 mins), directed by JD Dillard, with special guest Dr. Robin R. Means Coleman.

HOW TO WATCH

• Open Chrome + download the Scener extension

• Log-in to Scener.com or register a new account

• Visit Scener.com/blackcinemacltv to join the party via Netflix

For additional help, visit scener.com/faq

Organized and designed by Chile Dulce
Presented by Black Cinema Collective (BCC)

#blackcinemacollective #bccafterdark

ABOUT THE FILM + GUEST

SWEETHEART (2019, USA, 82 mins)
Directed by JD Dillard

Jenn has washed ashore a small tropical island and it doesn't take her long to realize she's completely alone. She must spend her days not only surviving the elements, but must also fend off the malevolent force that comes out each night.

Follow Dr. Coleman on Facebook + Twitter @MeansColeman
Learn more about Dr. Coleman’s academic work at bit.ly/3CeKHKV

The Frye celebrates the final weekend of the landmark exhibition Black Refractions: Highlights from The Studio Museum in Harlem with a special screening program of artist videos and short films curated by Berette S Macaulay of Black Cinema Collective. With a view to expanding and “refracting” The Studio Museum in Harlem’s focus on art of the African diaspora, the screening features works by artists both in and beyond the Black Refractions exhibition.

SHAPESHIFTERS artists + program order:

1. Cloudscape, 2004, Lorna Simpson

2. Native Sun, 2011, Terence Nance + Samuel “Blitz the Ambassador” Bazawule

3. Mango Mango, 2015, Tiffany Smith

4. Autumn, 2016, Deborah Anzinger

5. Jaunt, 2011, Nari Ward

6. Boneshaker, 2013, Nuotama Frances Bodomo

7. for those who mispronounce my name, 2018, Maya Cozier

8. Sopera de Yemaya: Olokun, 2020, Courtney Desiree Morris

9. Escaped Lunatic, 2010/11, Steffani Jemison

10. Crusader, 2006, Nari Ward

11. Afronauts, 2014, Nuotama Frances Bodomo

“Our program brings together a distinctive gathering of artists and filmmakers from a wide range of cinematic and video art vocabularies which speak to the boundless cultural, historical, mythological, and spiritual refractions of the Black diaspora. Among them are Lorna Simpson, Nari Ward, and Steffani Jemison, three of the artists included in Black Refractions: Highlights from the Studio Museum in Harlem, who in this screening present works not on view in the exhibition at the Frye. The newly selected works by each artist, Cloudscape, 2004 (Simpson), Jaunt, 2011 and Crusader, 2006 (Ward), and Escaped Lunatic, 2010/11 (Jemison) anchor the program’s three acts, taking us through loosely-defined chapters devoted to memory/knowledge/play; hybridity + shapeshifting; and imaginary futures im/material. A selection of shorts from multidisciplinary practitioners Deborah Anzinger, Maya Cozier, Courtney Desiree Morris, and Tiffany Smith round out the program, in conversation with longer pieces from filmmakers Nuotama Frances Bodomo and Terence Nance + Samuel “Blitz the Ambassador” Bazawule.

There are multiple worlds of memory and mourning, histories, beliefs, myths, and material cultures, which suggest that loss and the trauma of erasure and ruin can be forces that also bring about invention and renewed forms of thriving liberation. There can be delight in "third-worlding"—coopting and redirecting—whatever is deemed by the status quo as fixed or legitimate, and in so doing, moving beyond the prescribed maps and mistaken territories of the dominant narrative. If we consider memory not only as recordkeeping but as an act of imagination, fragmented identities can shapeshift through speculative ecologies of community, environment, knowledge, land, and language to become whole. The films in this program explore ruin, reclamation, and survivalist methods of existence across multiple spaces of catastrophe and hope, dreaming and invention, and simple acts of playfulness and love. They break free of borders and minimizing categories so we can conjure the mythic and invent our way beyond colonial ruin.”

— Berette S. Macaulay for Black Cinema Collective

SHAPESHIFTERS is curated by Berette S. Macaulay for Black Cinema Collective, and organized on behalf of Frye Art Museum by Amanda Donnan, Chief Curator, and Erin Langner, Exhibitions and Publications Coordinator. The program is presented in partnership with Jazmyn Scott, Program Manager at Langston Seattle.  Partner presentation with Murmurations, a Seattle-wide Arts Collaboration.

Support for this program is provided in part by Art Bridges. Additional support is provided by the Frye Foundation and Frye Members.

Black Refractions: Highlights from The Studio Museum in Harlem is organized by the American Federation of Arts and The Studio Museum in Harlem. This exhibition is curated by Connie H. Choi, Associate Curator of the Permanent Collection at The Studio Museum in Harlem. The presentation at the Frye Art Museum is coordinated by Amanda Donnan, Chief Curator, with David Strand, Associate Curator.

BLACK SPATIAL ELEGANCE: NEW CINEMATIC LANGUAGE OF GLOBAL BLACK MUSIC

“Serious Tings”
Wayne Chen in conversation with Steve "Urchin" Wilson + special guest Maxine Walters

The exciting 3rd act of our 3-part inaugural gathering that recognizes and celebrates Black Music Month in Seattle, foregrounding the influence of Black music through the visual and cinematic legacies of videos, films, art direction + design produced by Black storytellers throughout the diaspora.

Watch via FB Live

Watch via YouTube Live

Explore the BSE Serious Tings Playlist

Visit Henry Website

Hosted by Henry Art Gallery + Partners to compliment the Gary Simmons: The Engine Room exhibition.

ABOUT GUESTS

► MAXINE WALTERS has worked in film, music and entertainment production, public relations and marketing for nearly 40 years. She is a passionate Jamaican who delights in creative and cultural exchanges with friends and associates in sister islands of the Caribbean and worldwide. One of her earliest projects was co-founding the Reggae Sunsplash concert series in 1978. Maxine has worked on photo campaigns, commercials, video and film productions with Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Richard Branson, Puma, Adidas, and Nike. Her music video production credits include Lorde, Usain Bolt, Damian “Junior Gong” Marley, Lauren Hill, The Fugees, Beenie Man, and Wycleff Jean among others. Maxine has shared her production skills with students as visiting professor at La Escuela Internacional de Cine y Television, Cuba; the University of the West Indies, Barbados; and locally in Jamaica at The Creative Production and Training Centre (CPTC). Maxine Walters has produced 99% of the international commercials for the world’s fastest man Usain Bolt.

Over the past 30 years she has also collected over 4,000 Jamaican Dancehall hand-painted and stenciled street signs, sometimes scaling walls, gullies and trees islandwide to retrieve worn or discarded pieces. Seeing their artistic merit, Maxine promoted and exhibited them locally and internationally, in New York, Berlin, Montreal, Los Angeles, New Orleans, during Art Basel Miami, and the Havana Biennale. She published Serious Things A Go Happen (2016), a book offering an “unofficial history of Jamaican dance hall music told through its graphic design”with a forward from author Marlon James, and essay contributions from Vivian Goldman and others. The book was critically received with features in the New Yorker, Vogue online and a documentary on the Arté channel. Book proceeds were given to the Kingston hospice named for her father, Consie Walters.

In 2017, the Government of Jamaica awarded her the Order of Distinction for promoting Jamaican culture internationally. She lives in rural Jamaica and sojourns in the capital city, Kingston.

► WAYNE CHRISTOPHER CHEN is Chairman of CVM Television, Jamaica’s Southern Regional Health Authority, and Petrojam. He is President of the Caribbean Employers Confederation, which represents 18 national employers’ organizations, and as a member of CARICOM’s Human Resource Development Commission. He was Jamaica Observer’s 1998 Business Leader of the Year and is co-author of “Reggae Routes: The Story of Jamaican Music” (1998 Temple University Press) and Executive Producer of Toots and the Maytals’s Grammy-nominated album “Ska Father” (1999).

► STEVE "URCHIN" WILSON started his music journey working at Bob Marley's legendary Tuff Gong record label as a marketing executive. He spent 10 years cross training in every imaginable area in the entertainment industry, and most notably as studio manager for the GeeJam Studios where he oversaw studio sessions for The Roots, Common, The Gorillaz, No Doubt & The Jungle Brothers amongst others. In 2001, Steve was signed on to help pilot what became the dizzying career of multi-platinum Grammy winner Sean Paul. As a reggae ambassador, Steve guided concert tours in over 100 countries, while also managing independent musicians locally. He also organized bringing EDM & house music to his home base of Kingston, Jamaica via his Brand New Machine (BNM) party series, platforming super DJs like Diplo, Bob Sinclair, CongoRock & Toddla T to spin on the island for the first time. He has gone on to export the BNM party concept to Montego Bay, Cayman, London & New York City. Steve recently published “Look Down : sh*t you might have missed" a coffee table book made up of photos taken on his many travels coupled with quotes from his Father and Grandfathers."
#BlackSpatialElegance

Presented by Black Cinema Collective in partnership with Wa Na Wari, Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), Langston Seattle, and Henry Art Gallery

Organized by Berette S Macaulay
Media design by Chile Dulce
Tech Production by Ian Siporin

Black Spatial Elegance: Sight and Sound

Guest artist Rell Be Free in conversation with Berette S Macaulay, Jazmyn Scott, + Inye Wokoma

Discussing a 40 year journey of music film/video history, discussing directors, art direction, cinematography styles + craft, and influences from the MTV evolution to independent revolutions
on YouTube and beyond.

Re-watch the Stream on:

Facebook Live

YouTube Live

Enjoy the Sight + Sound Playlist

ABOUT GUESTS

RELL BE FREE is a multifaceted creative, Underground Educator, and active community organizer from the South End of Seattle. Rell has contributed energy towards collectives that lift up young folx, the arts & Black culture, as well as Abolition, community defense and much more. As a musician Rell currently has 7 projects available on streaming platforms, the most recent being “SOLEDAD.”
For more of Rell Be Free's work, visit rellbefree.art

BERETTE S MACAULAY MA is a Washington based interdisciplinary photo-based artist, independent curator, and writer born in Sierra Leone, W. Africa, and raised in Jamaica and the UK. She is a transcultural roving spirit deeply drawn to migration + displacement histories of colonial peoples. She is the founder and lead organizer of Black Cinema Collective, serves as the Art Liaison Program Manager at Henry Art Gallery, and was recently named the inaugural Curatorial Fellow at On the Boards.
For more of Berette's work, visit berettemacaulay.com

JAZMYN SCOTT is the Program Manager of LANGSTON; Seattle’s hub for Black arts and culture, co-founder of 50 Next: Seattle Hip-Hop Worldwide, a digital “time capsule” highlighting Seattle and Northwest Hip-Hop, and co-curator of The Legacy of Seattle Hip-Hop exhibit at the Museum of History & Industry; which won the 2016 American Association for State & Local History (AASLH) Leadership in History award.
For more of Jazmyn's work, visit langstonseattle.org

INYE WOKOMA is a journalist, filmmaker and visual artist who explores the intersections of our political economies and shared histories through the lens of personal narratives rooted in the neighborhood he grew up in, the Central District. He is the co-founder of Wa Na Wari, the center for Black art located in one of his family’s Central District homes. Inye’s creative work as an artist and filmmaker interrogates the meaning of land, identity, politics, and justice as a way of better understanding the past in order to shape transformative possibilities for the future.

BLACK SPATIAL ELEGANCE: NEW CINEMATIC LANGUAGE OF GLOBAL BLACK MUSIC Program series.
An inaugural gathering that recognizes and celebrates Black Music Month in Seattle, foregrounding influence of Black music through the visual and cinematic legacies of videos, films, art direction + design produced by Black storytellers throughout the diaspora.

#BlackSpatialElegance

Presented by Black Cinema Collective in partnership with Wa Na Wari, Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), Langston Seattle, and Henry Art Gallery.

Organized by Berette S Macaulay
Media design by Chile Dulce

BLACK SPATIAL ELEGANCE: NEW CINEMATIC LANGUAGE OF GLOBAL BLACK MUSIC is an inaugural gathering that recognizes and celebrates Black Music Month in Seattle, where we foreground the influence of Black music through the visual and cinematic legacies of videos, films, art direction + design produced by Black storytellers throughout the diaspora.

Program Series Introduction
“An Evolutionary History of Visual Art + Music”
Presented by Cassidy Correia + Devan Kirk
Hosted by BCC + Partners

Thurs, June 24 @ 7:00 pm PST

TONIGHT!!!
Streaming LIVE here on FB
+
Watch the program via Henry Art Gallery’s YouTube.

Explore the event playlist!

ABOUT GUESTS

► CASSIDY CORREIA (she/her) is a first-generation student the University of Washington, Seattle. She is majoring in International Studies with a focus in International Human Rights and minoring in Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian studies. With an indigenous Brazilian background, her current studies focus on the human rights of indigenous communities. Cassidy was born and raised in Seattle, Washington and has a deep connection to Seattle music scene.

► DEVAN KIRK is a recent graduate from the University of Washington, where they just received their degree in Art and Anthropology. They were born and raised in Seattle, Washington and have been an active part of the University of Washington community, especially as a former track & field Student-Athlete. Devan also makes art in their spare time, typically using photography as their medium. He is planning to move to the Netherlands to study Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam in August!

For more of Kirk's work, visit kirkdevan.myportfolio.com

#BlackSpatialElegance

Presented by Black Cinema Collective in partnership with Wa Na Wari, Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), Langston Seattle, and Henry Art Gallery

Organized by Berette S Macaulay

Media design by Chile Dulce

A special screening + communing of Black art films featuring:

• Who We Be (2017) by Adama Delphine Fawundu

• Go-Rilla Means War (2017) by Crystal Z Campbell

• Royaltee (2018) + Looking Glass v. Self (2017) Kamari Bright

• How To Return To The Earth When It Turned It's Back On You (2019) by Mia Imani

The works of our guest artists invite us to question what we know, and further what we remember, as thriving survivors offering a/new home to one another. Artist Panel to follow screening.

Presented by Black Cinema Collective and Wa Na Wari
Organized by Berette S Macaulay

About the Program

The imaginative survivance
of settler colonial causation,
of generational displacement,
of occupation,
of reclamation,
seems a perennial r(e)volutionary act of co-creation throughout the Black diaspora.
Through culture-making, dream-scaping, linguistic coding, and embodied rituals of kinship that defy erasure across time, space, and circumstance, there are life-affirming rootings that remove the question of be/longing, and instead – perform it.

While we course-correct histories, how do we sustain our ancestral memories with witnessing and wonderment to cultivate new futures?
When considering the role of caretakers and storytellers, how do we nourish indigenous and diasporic kinfolk, and the earth?
How do we re-figure our co-existent “right to rights”, and our right to belong?

The works of our guest artists invite us to question what we know, and further what we remember, as thriving survivors offering a/new home to one another.

About the Artists & Films

Who We Be, 2017

“Who We Be is an experimental video with words, sounds and visuals. It is a collaboration between me and James Benjamin Lewis aka Biggie Flighter (featured performer) as we think about the social and political implications of colonialism and slavery on language. James Benjamin Lewis is a musician and activist based in Freetown, Sierra Leone, W. Africa.”

ADAMA DELPHINE FAWUNDU is a photo-based visual artist born in Brooklyn, NY to parents from Sierra Leone and Equatorial Guinea, West Africa. She received her MFA from Columbia University. Ms. Fawundu is a co-author/editor of the critically acclaimed book MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora. This book features over 100 women photographers of African descent from around the globe. Her most recent works investigate indigenous ontologies while imagining new ways of being in the world. Her interests included decolonization, memory, and interrogating histories. Fawundu uses photography, video, sculpture and printmaking to create new transnational identities as she explores Afrofuturist ideas.
http://delphinefawudu.com

Go-Rilla Means War, 2017

With 35mm film salvaged from a now demolished black civil rights theater in Brooklyn, Go-Rilla Means War is a filmic relic of gentrification–––a parable weaving intersections of development,
cultural preservation, and erasure.

Originally commissioned by SculptureCenter, as part of curator Alexis Wilksinon's In Practice Exhibition

CRYSTAL Z CAMPBELL is a multidisciplinary artist, experimental filmmaker, and writer of African American, Filipino, and Chinese descents. Campbell finds complexity in public secrets— fragments of information known by many but untold or unspoken. Recent works revisit questions of immortality and medical ethics with Henrietta Lacks's “immortal” cell line, ponder the role of a political monument and displacement in a Swedish coastal landscape, and salvage a 35mm film from a demolished Black activist theater in Brooklyn as a relic of gentrification. Sonic, material, and archival traces of the witness informs their work in film, performance, installation, sound, painting, and texts.

Honors and awards include the Pollock-Krasner Award, MAP Fund, MacDowell, MAAA, Skowhegan, Rijksakademie, Whitney ISP, Franklin Furnace; Tulsa Artist Fellowship, and Flaherty Film Seminar. Exhibitions include the Drawing Center (US), Nest (NL), ICA-Philadelphia (US), REDCAT (US), Artissima (IT), Studio Museum of Harlem (US), Project Row Houses (US), and SculptureCenter (US), amongst others. Campbell’s writing has been featured in World Literature Today, Monday Journal, GARAGE, and Hyperallergic. Campbell is founder of the virtual programming platform archiveacts.com.

Campbell is a Harvard Radcliffe Film Study Center & David and Roberta Logie Fellow (2020-2021) living and working in Oklahoma.
www. crystalzcampbell.com

Royaltee, 2018

A poetic short film highlighting the hidden nobility of even the persecuted parts of Black culture.

Looking Glass v. Self, 2017

Inspired by the increased publicity of police brutality and Black death through social media channels, Looking Glass v. Self highlights the influence of negative media imagery on perception, identity formation, and mental health.

KAMARI BRIGHT is an award-winning emerging creative whose videopoems have screened at the 8th International Video Poetry Festival of Thuringia, Tacoma Film Festival, Cadence Video Poetry Festival, Festival International du Film PanAfricain de Cannes, Seattle Black Film Festival, and the 2020 Film & Videopoetry Symposium. She is currently working on a videopoem connecting personal trauma and land stewardship/pollution.
kamaribright.com

How To Return To The Earth When It Turned It's Back On You, 2019

“They forced their minds to desert their bodies and their striving spirits sought to rise like frail whirlwinds from the hard red clay.” - Alice Walker

How To Return To The Earth When It Turned It's Back On You is not a recreation of a dream but an invitation to extend its messages. Filmed in a forest close to where I use to incubate my dreams (Königsheide, Berlin), How To Return is a documentation of an experimental ritual that explores the following questions:

How can we connect with our ancestors through the soil?
How can we heal the wounds that are left in the soil?
How can we retrieve stored memories in soil?

Special Thanks to Shannon Sea, Sound Artist
In collaboration with, and filmed by interdisciplinary artist János Brückner.

MIA IMANI is an international interdisciplinary artivist (art + activist) and arts writer based in Berlin, Germany. She creates and curates liminal spaces that invite Black and Brown communities to heal individual and communal trauma through conscious (day-dreaming, visualization) and subconscious (lucid, REM sleep) dreaming. These works aim to center the agency of marginalized communities and use dreams as a portal to manifest alternative past(s), present(s), and future(s). Mia’s creative and collaborative work has lived in the Northwest Film Forum, Seattle Art Museum Lab, Savvy Contemporary, and is expanding into the digital and other interdisciplinary spaces. Her written work lives both digitally and in print within publications Cultured Magazine, Contemporary And, Daddy Magazine, Frieze, Hyperallergic, Vice, and more.
She received her B.A. in Media Communications Studies from the University of Washington and is completing her Master’s in North American Culture and Literature studies at Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany.

About the Organizer

BERETTE S MACAULAY is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and writer born in Sierra Leone, W. Africa, raised in Jamaica and the UK, and now living in the US. She is a transcultural roving spirit deeply drawn to migration + displacement histories of colonial peoples. She is the founder of Black Cinema Collective and co-organizes programs with Mateó B. Ochoa and Savita Krishnamoorthy. She also serves as the Art Liaison Program Manager at Henry Art Gallery and was recently named the inaugural Curatorial Fellow at On the Boards.

Abderrahmane Sissako is a Mauritanian-born Malian film director and producer whose themes include globalization, exile and the displacement of people. His films have received global recognition: Waiting for Happiness (Heremakano) screened at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival official selection under Un Certain Regard, winning the FIPRESCI Prize. His next film, Bamako (2006), received the first Film Award of the Council of Europe. In 2014 Timbuktu was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or in the main competition section at the  Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Discussants will include Danny Hoffman (African Studies, University of Washington), Rich Watts (French, UW), Catherine Cole (Divisional Dean of the Arts, UW), Sudhir Mahadevan (Cinema & Media Studies, UW), Berette Macaulay (Museum Guide Program Manager, Henry Art Gallery, UW), and Jazmyn Scott (LANGSTON Seattle).  

Conversation will be in French and English.

More on Simpson Center website

In anticipation of Simpson Center’s upcoming Katz Lecture featuring African director Abderrahmane Sissako, the Black Cinema Collective will be watching his Oscar nominated film TIMBUKTU on Scener.

This beautiful film meets the current social and political moment, poetically interrogating the complexities of humanity, extremism, and resistance. Come watch with us.

▷ ABOUT the FILM

TIMBUKTU, 2014 | 96 mins
The film explores the denizens of the city of Timbuktu, Mali, West Africa, who are living under strict sharia law around the year 2012 during the brief occupation by Ansar Dine. Islamic militants impose a regime of absurd living restrictions and real terror in the ancient Malian city. Just beyond the city in peaceful tent settlements of the dunes, the lives of a Malian cattle herder and his family are also threatened by fundamentalists after a tragic accident.

This film was also inspired by the true story of a young, unmarried couple who were stoned by Islamists in the northern region of Mali that was known as Aguel'hoc. During the summer of 2012, the couple was taken to the center of their village, placed in two holes that had been dug in the ground, and stoned to death in front of hundreds of witnesses.

Languages | Tamasheq, Bambara, Arabic, French, some English.
Subtitles | English

▷ ABOUT THE DIRECTOR

Abderrahmane Sissako (born 13 October 1961) is a Malian director and producer, born in Mauritania and trained in Moscow, Russia. Themes of his work include poverty, globalization, exile, interfaith tolerance, multiculturalism, and the displacement of peoples. His award-winning films include Life on Earth (1998), Waiting for Happiness (Heremakano - 2002), Bamako (2006), and Tiya’s Dream, (2008). In 2014 his film Timbuktu was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or in the main competition section at the Cannes Film Festival, winning the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury and the François Chalais Prize at Cannes. In 2015, the film was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and a BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language at the British Academy Film Awards.

Sissako is regarded as one of the foremost thinkers on Global South cinema as well as one of Africa’s leading filmmakers sharing the uncommon achievement with the likes of Ousmane Sembène and Djibril Diop Mambety in bridging African cinema with international audiences. His “work is as unsparing and it is visually stunning in examining the global forces that shape African lives.” Sissako has also served as president of the Cannes Short Films and Cinefondation Jury.
He is married to the Ethiopian film director Maji-da Abdi.

▷ ABOUT SIMPSON CENTER KATZ LECTURE:

Abderrahmane Sissako In Conversation: “Africa Worlds / World Films,”

*Sissako* joins scholars of film and African Studies for a conversation on world cinema, post-colonialism, thinking ‘Africa’ beyond the confines of the continent, and in particular his 2014 film Timbuktu.

*Conversation will be in French and English.*

▷PANELISTS

Catherine M. Cole, Danny Hoffman, berette s macaulay, Sudhir Mahadevan, Jazmyn Scott, Richard Watts

More on the Simpson Center website.