Programs
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Abderrahmane Sissako’s African Worlds
A four-film series and lecture by Abderrahmane Sissako in conversation,holding the transformational poetics of humanitarian cinema. April 22nd – 26th, 2022.
ABOUT SISSAKO & THE SERIES
What is the place of West Africa in the world and of the world in West Africa? These are the questions that the Oscar- and Palme d’Or-nominated filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako asks insistently in films that address the impact of World Bank and IMF policies in Mali and beyond (Bamako, 2006), the confrontation between extremist and moderate Islam in the southern Sahara (Timbuktu, 2014), and exile in Europe and the difficulties of returning home (Life on Earth, 1999). In all of his films, Sissako brings a worldly sensibility to the representation of the most pressing concerns of the continent, but always with an eye for the beauty and tenderness in everyday life, no matter how difficult, and for the moral ambiguities and linguistic complexities that evade so many representations of West Africa.
SCHEDULE
Apr. 22 at 1:00pm: Life on Earth (1998, 61 mins), at Henry Art Gallery Auditorium, Program Introduction by James Long
Apr. 23 at 3:00pm: Waiting for Happiness (2002, 95 mins) at Henry Art Gallery Auditorium, Film Introduction by Richard Watts
Apr. 24 at 1:00pm: Bamako (2006, 117 mins) at Northwest Film ForumApr. 25, 6:00 –8:00pm: Timbuktu (2014, 97 mins) at NW Film Forum, followed by Q & A with Sissako, Introduction by Berette S Macaulay, Interpretation by Richard Watts
Apr. 26, 7:00 -8:30pm: Translating African Worlds: A Conversation with Filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako, Kane Hall at UW
Abderrahmane Sissako is the 2022 University of Washington Katz Distinguished Lecturer.
He will be joined in conversation on April 26th by Berette S Macaulay (founder of Seattle’s Black Cinema Collective) and Maya Smith (Dir. of African Studies at UW). This public conversation will be in English + French with Richard Watts as interpreter.
REGISTRATION CLOSED.
ABOUT THE FILMS
La Vie Sur Terre (Life on Earth), 1998 (trailer)
Set in the rural village of Sokolo on the eve of the 21st century, Dramane (Abderrahmane Sissako), a Malian who lives in Paris, returns to his family's African village to visit his father (Mohamed Sissako). Dramane realizes how different and stagnated his village is compared to the ever-changing modern world, especially at the dawn of a new millennium. While home, he strikes up a friendship with beautiful villager Nana (Nana Baby), with whom he contemplates the future.
(Sources: Wikipedia & Rotten Tomatoes)
Mali / 61 minutes / Comedy Drama / Bambara and French with English subtitles
Screening in person at Henry Art Gallery Auditorium, April 22nd, 1:00 pm
Heremakono/Waiting for Happiness, 2002 (trailer)
Hassania Nouadhibou is a small coastal Mauritanian city that acts as a transit point to the West. Abdallah returns home on his way to Europe. Having forgotten how to speak in his mother’s tongue, he becomes a mute observer of village life and its minor intrigues. His mother and Khatra, an orphan boy apprenticed to an aging electrician, try to help him adapt, but to little avail. Abdallah, with his eyes fixed on the horizon, awaits the arrival of hypothetical happiness.
Source: African Film Festival NY
Mali and Mauritania / 95mins / Drama / French and Hassania with English subtitles
Screening in person at Henry Art Gallery Auditorium, April 23rd, 3:00pm
BAMAKO, 2006 (trailer)
An extraordinary trial is taking place in a residential courtyard in Bamako, the capital city of Mali. African citizens have taken proceedings against such international financial institutions as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), whom civil society blames for perpetuating Africa’s debt crisis, at the heart of so many of the continent’s woes. As numerous trial witnesses (schoolteachers, farmers, writers, etc.) air bracing indictments against the global economic machinery that haunts them, life in the courtyard presses forward. Melé, a lounge singer, and her unemployed husband Chaka are on the verge of breaking up; a security guard’s gun goes missing; a young man lies ill; a wedding procession passes through; and women keep everything rolling – dyeing fabric, minding children, spinning cotton, and speaking their minds.
Co-executive produced by Danny Glover (who also provides a cameo in the film). Director Sissako, who grew up in the courtyard that the film is set in, hired professional lawyers and judges along with “witnesses” to express their true feelings. Bamako voices Africa’s grievances in an original and profoundly moving way.
Stills courtesy of Icarus Films
Mali and France /117 mins / Political Drama /French, Bambara, English & Hebrew with English subtitles
Screening in person at Northwest Film Forum, April 24rd, 1:00 pm
TIMBUKTU, 2014 (trailer)
Not far from Timbuktu, now ruled by the religious fundamentalists, Kidane lives peacefully in the dunes with his wife Satima, his daughter Toya, and Issan, their twelve-year-old shepherd. In town, the people suffer, powerless, from the regime of terror imposed by the Jihadists determined to control their faith. Music, laughter, cigarettes, even soccer have been banned. The women have become shadows but resist with dignity. Every day, the new improvised courts issue tragic and absurd sentences.
Kidane and his family are being spared the chaos that prevails in Timbuktu. But their destiny changes when Kidane accidentally kills Amadou, the fisherman who slaughtered “GPS,” his beloved cow. He now has to face the new laws of the foreign occupants.
Timbuktu was featured in the Palme d’Or main competition at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, earned the 2015 Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, and won seven 2015 Cesar Awards in France, including Best Director and Best Film.
Stills and synopsis courtesy of Cohen Media.
Mauritania, France and Qatar /97 mins / Drama / French, Arabic, Bambara, English, Songhay and Tamashek with English subtitles
Screening in person at Northwest Film Forum, April 24rd, 6:00 pm, followed by Q & A with Abderrahmane Sissako
ABOUT INTERVIEWERS
Berette S Macaulay is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and writer born in Sierra Leone, and raised in Jamaica. Her work engages complex cultural negotiations of be/longing, trans*national personhood, coded identity-performance, memory, and mythmaking. Exhibition and sharing spaces include Melkweg Expo (Netherlands), Art Alive (India), SP-Arte (Brazil), Memorial ACTe Museum (Guadeloupe), and Annenberg Space for Photography (USA). Permanent collections include National Gallery of Jamaica and Int’l Center for Photography (as ‘SeBiArt’). She received the UW Ottenberg-Winans Fellowship for African Studies (2019) for her ongoing research on Afro-gestural vocabularies Embodied Witness: Performing Memory for Black (re)Cognition, recently presented as a film essay and participatory engagement at the 2022 Black Portraitures VII Conference: Play & Performance at Rutgers University. Her work has been supported with artist grants and residencies from the National Performance Network (NPN), Vermont Studio Center, Jack Straw Cultural Center, Shunpike Arts, and 4Culture. Her curatorial projects include the permanent exhibition Mystic of a Woman on Rita Marley at the Bob Marley Museum, illusive self at Taller Boricua Gallery, NY, and MFON in Seattle (2019-2020), a five month-long series of exhibitions and talks she conceived and organized in partnership with MFON Women Photographers of the African Diaspora, Jacob Lawrence Gallery, Frye Art Museum, and Photographic Center NW. Berette is the Curatorial Fellow at On the Boards where her collaborative performance project ‘[UN- TITLED]’is in development, co-commissioned by BRIC Arts New York. She serves as professor/Art Liaison Program Manager at Henry Art Gallery and is the founder of Black Cinema Collective – a project of i•ma•gine e•volve.
Maya Smith completed her undergraduate and master’s degree at New York University in the joint MA/BA program with the Institute of French Studies. She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in Romance Languages and Linguistics. Her scholarship broadly focuses on the intersection of racial and linguistic identity formations among marginalized groups in the African diaspora, particularly in the postcolonial francophone world. Her book, Senegal Abroad: Linguistic Borders, Racial Formations, and Diasporic Imaginaries, was published with the University of Wisconsin Press in January 2019. Through a critical examination of language and multilingual practices in qualitative, ethnographic data, Senegal Abroad shows how language is key in understanding the formation of national, transnational, postcolonial, racial, and migrant identities among Senegalese in Paris, Rome, and New York. This is a book about language attitudes, how they influence people’s local and global interactions with the world, how they change through the experience of migration, and how in turn they affect migrants’ language use. Senegal Abroad received the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies at the MLA 2021. In addition to the Senegalese Diaspora, Maya focuses on how blackness is constructed in the French Caribbean and is also interested in language pedagogy. She is also devoting time to public scholarship seen in her recent publication in Yes! Magazine: “Enunciating Power: Amanda Gorman and My Battle to Claim My Voice.” Maya has been the recipient of various grants including the Camargo Foundation's Author-in-Residence Fellowship, the Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship for Junior Faculty, the UW Research Royalty Fund Fellowship, the Simpson Center Society of Scholars.
Partnered Films series organized in collaboration with BCC's lead organizer Berette S Macaulay, NWFF's Artistic Dir. Rana San & team, and UW French Lecturer Richard Watts, with the Henry's Youth & Public Programs Manager and Curator, Ian Siporin and Mita Mahato.
Katz Lecture organized by Simpson Center's Director Kathleen Woodward and Programs & Events Manager, Caitlin Palo.
Sponsored by Simpson Center for the Humanities in co-presenting partnership with UW African Studies Program, Black Cinema Collective, Henry Art Gallery, and Northwest Film Forum.
BETWEEN THE FRAMES: Virtual Screening + Discussion
BETWEEN THE FRAMES is a film program in Redmond that uses visual storytelling to promote and deepen our understanding of different histories, traditions, and cultures.
These films, situated in the Black North American and South Asian contexts, are linked by themes of memory, acceptance, self-love, and the complexities of the diasporic experience. In particular, they explore and disrupt the deep connections between internalized racial biases and colorism within and between Black and South Asian communities.
Rewatch the program on YouTube
This program features:
WHAT’S YOUR BROWN NUMBER? (2015, India, 4:31 mins)
Directed by Vinnie Ann Bose; Produced by Studio EeksaurusKAALA (2019, India, 15:24 mins)
Directed by Tarun Jain; Produced by Nasira Khan
ABOUT THE FILMS + ARTISTS
WHAT’S YOUR BROWN NUMBER? (2015, India, 4:31 mins)
Directed by Vinnie Ann Bose; Produced by Studio Eeksaurus
What's Your Brown Number? is an animated satire on colorism that questions the nuances of idealized beauty based on skin tone in India.
VINNIE ANN BOSE
VINNIE ANN BOSE is an Indian born animator, living and working in France since 2018. She holds a Bachelors in Animation Film Design from the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, India and a Masters in Animation film direction from Joined École de la poudrière, Valence, France.
What is your Brown Number? was part of an incubation student project that Vinnie made while studying at NID under the mentorship of Suresh Eriyat of Studio Eeksaurus.
She is currently working on a short film project titled "Sulaimani" and a TV series project for children titled "Mousse & Bichon", as author and director.
KAALA (2019, India, 15:24 mins)
Directed by Tarun Jain; Produced by Nasira Khan
Kaala (Black in Hindi) is a short socio-political film specifically on hate crimes against African nationals that occurred in New Delhi, India in 2016 and 2017.
TARUN JAIN
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.
Moderated discussion led by Dr. Nalini Iyer
DR. NALINI IYER
NALINI IYER is Professor of English at Seattle University and current holder of the Theiline Pigott-McCone Endowed Chair for the Humanities. She teaches postcolonial studies including South Asian and African writing, and courses on postcolonial and transnational feminisms. Her research focuses on three interrelated areas: the hegemony of Anglophone writing in South Asia, South Asian diaspora studies, and Partition Studies. Her publications include the following: Other Tongues: Rethinking the Language Debates in India (co-edited with Bonnie Zare, Rodopi 2009); Roots and Reflections: South Asians in the Pacific Northwest (co-authored with Amy Bhatt, University of Washington Press 2013); and Revisiting India’s Partition: New Essays in Memory, Culture, and Politics (co-edited with Amritjit Singh and Rahul K. Gairola, Lexington 2016/Orient Blackswan 2016). She is the Chief Editor of South Asian Review and the first woman to hold that position in the journal’s forty-year history.
This program was organized by Savita Krishnamoorthy
Media design by Chile Dulce
Presented by Black Cinema Collective (BCC)
www.blackcinemacollective.org
This project is supported in part by grants from the City of Redmond and 4Culture
BETWEEN THE FRAMES: Outdoor Screening
BETWEEN THE FRAMES is a film program in Redmond that uses visual storytelling to promote and deepen our understanding of different histories, traditions, and cultures.
These films, situated in the Black North American and South Asian contexts, are linked by themes of memory, acceptance, self-love, and the complexities of the diasporic experience. In particular, they explore and disrupt the deep connections between internalized racial biases and colorism within and between Black and South Asian communities.
This program features:
BLACK SOUL (2002, Canada, 9:50 mins)
Directed by Martine Chartrand; Produced by National Film Board, CanadaRECOILED (2019, USA, 8:02 mins)
Directed by Claire Grim; Produced by Shalom Simmons
September 2021 @ the Buoyant Pavilion in Downtown Park, Redmond
Available every Tues, Wed, & Thurs
8 – 10 pm PST
*Films will play on loop
ABOUT THE FILMS + ARTISTS
BLACK SOUL (2002, Canada, 9:50 mins)
Directed by Martine Chartrand; Produced by National Film Board, Canada
Black Soul an animated short, is a lyrical discovery through constantly shifting images into the journeys of Black peoples through Africa and North America. A grandmother’s memory becomes the gateway into stories of defining moments in Black History, a legacy bequeathed to the next generation to never forget, to safeguard, and to pass on.
MARTINE CHARTRAND is a Canadian Haitian filmmaker who directed the award-winning short film T.V Tango (1992) for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). She made her second film for NFB entitled Black Soul (2000), an animated short tracing the memory of Black History, which garnered 23 awards, including the Golden Bear at the Berlinale 2001. Her third film, MacPherson (2012), inspired by a song from Quebec singer-songwriter Félix Leclerc, won the First Prize and the Best Canadian Short Film Public Award at the Montreal International World Film Festival in 2012.
RECOILED (2019, USA, 8:02 mins)
Directed by Claire Grim; Produced by Shalom Simmons
Recoiled unpacks themes of stereotypes, disrupting hegemonic standards of beauty, and the stigmatization of black hair. It reiterates the importance of valuing one’s authentic self, pride in your culture, and in the positive representation of Black voices.
This animated short is produced by 6 students in the Electronic Arts Program at Missouri State University; Claire Grim (Writer/Director), Shalom Simmons (Writer/Producer), Shelby Corely (Art Direction), Matt Fuller (Technical Direction), Brandon Huddleston (Original Music), and Kersten Schatz (Producer/Screenplay). Recoiled won the Broadcast Education Association’s 2019 Best of Festival award in the Screenwriting category.
This program was organized by Savita Krishnamoorthy
Media design by Chile Dulce
Presented by Black Cinema Collective (BCC)
www.blackcinemacollective.org
This project is supported in part by grants from the City of Redmond and 4Culture
#blackcinemacollective #betweentheframes
Black Spatial Elegance: Serious Tings
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.
Explore the BSE Serious Tings Playlist
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
An Evolutionary History of Visual Art + Music
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.
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
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