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.
Film still from On Childhood, 2019. Courtesy of artist.
SUNDAY DINNER
short film series of screenings + conversation in community
Wa Na Wari Seattle
Sunday, April 7th, 2024, 4:00 - 6:00pm
A community gathering of Caribbean food and short films by Simon Benjamin in the People’s House.
Sunday dinner bites provided by Taste of the Caribbean
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.
install of Errantry, courtesy of artist
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 Artist
Simon Benjamin is a Jamaican multi-disciplinary artist and filmmaker based in New York whose practice considers how the past ripples into the present in unexpected ways. Using the sea and coastal space as frameworks, his current body of work explores how lesser-known histories and colonial legacies impact our present and contribute to an interconnected future.
His work has been included in exhibitions and screenings internationally, including Kaunas Biennial, Lithuania (2023), Baxter St. CCNY, New York NY (2023); documenta 15, Kassel, Germany (2022); Kingston Biennial, National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica (2022); Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Governor’s Island, NY; Third Horizon film Festival, Miami, FL (2022); trinidad+tobago film festival, Trinidad and Tobago (2021); NYU Gallatin at Governors Island, New York, NY (2021); The 92nd St. Y, New York, NY (2020); Hunter East Harlem Gallery, New York, NY (2019); the Ghetto Biennial, Port Au Prince, Haiti (2018); Jamaica Biennial, National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica (2017); New Local Space, (NLS) Kingston (2016); and Columbia University, New York, NY (2016).
About the Curator:
Berette S Macaulay is an interdisciplinary artist and writer with creative and cultural practices in photography, mixed media, curating, and art organizing. She is the founder of Black Cinema Collective (BCC) which celebrates African and Afro-Diasporic films, and is a project of the collaborative arts incubator, i•ma•gine | e•volve. She is currently serving as Guest Curator for the 2024 Jacob Lawrence Gallery Legacy Residency Program, its exhibition and supporting engagements.
https://www.berettemacaulay.com
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PARTNERS:
LOCATION
Wa Na Wari Seattle
911 24th Avenue
Seattle, WA, 98122United States