Programs
Join us IRL or URL.
FINDING FELA Screening
Finding Fela, 2014
US, 120min, English
Dir. Alex Gibney
Finding Fela tells the story of Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s life, his music, his social and political importance. He created a new musical movement, Afrobeat, using that forum to express his revolutionary political opinions against the dictatorial Nigerian government of the 1970s and 1980s. His influence helped bring a change towards democracy in Nigeria and promoted Pan Africanist politics to the world.
The power and potency of Fela’s message is completely current today and is expressed in the political movements of oppressed people, embracing Fela’s music and message in their struggle for freedom. Directed by Academy Award winning filmmaker Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side).
Synopsis and stills courtesy of Kino Lorber.
Screening at Northwest Film Forum
FRIDAY June 16th
⏰ 8.30pm PDT
SATURDAY June 17th
⏰ 5.30pm PDT, 8.30pm PDT
SUNDAY June 18th
⏰ 5.30pm PDT, 8.30pm PDT
💰
$14 General Admission
$10 Student/Child/Senior
$7 NWFF Member
DRYLONGSO screening in partnership with Black Cinema Collective, LANGSTON, and SIFF
DRYLONGSO (Dir. Cauleen Smith) screening in partnership with Black Cinema Collective, LANGSTON, and SIFF
June 9 - *11th, 2023
@ SIFF Theater
511 Queen Anne Ave N, Seattle, WA 98101
SYNOPSIS:
A lost treasure of 1990s DIY filmmaking, Cauleen Smith’s Drylongso embeds an incisive look at racial injustice within a lovingly handmade buddy movie/murder mystery/romance. Alarmed by the rate at which the young Black men around her are dying—indeed, “becoming extinct,” as she sees it—brash Oakland art student Pica (Toby Smith) attempts to preserve their existence in Polaroid snapshots, along the way forging a friendship with a woman in an abusive relationship (April Barnett), experiencing love and loss, and being drawn into the search for a serial killer who is terrorizing the city. Capturing the vibrant community spirit of Oakland in the nineties, Smith crafts both a rare cinematic celebration of Black female creativity and a moving elegy for a generation of lost African American men.
DRYLONGSO TRAILER:
USA | 1998 | 86 mins | Director. Cauleen Smith
Opens June 9, 2023
Drylongso follows a woman in a photography class who begins taking pictures of Black men out of fear they will soon be extinct. New 4k restoration.
Principal Cast: Toby Smith, April Barnett, Will Power
Producer: Salim Akil
·Screenplay: Salim Akil, Cauleen Smith
Cinematographers: Andrew Black
Editors: Cauleen Smith
Music: Curt Harpel, Pat Thomi
Language: English
Distribution by Janus Films.
*SUPPORT BLACK LED ORGS:
Co-sponsors Black Cinema Collective and LANGSTON will each receive 25% of the proceeds from all Sunday, June 11 screenings.
SHOWTIMES
FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 2023
4:30 PM 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JUNE 10, 2023
1:30 PM. 4:30 PM. 7:30 PM
* SUNDAY, JUNE 11, 2023
1:30 PM 4:30 PM 7:30 PM
25% of tix sales for Sunday screening will go, each,
to BCC and LANGSTON
Black Sonic Evolutions | a reading list for Black Music History Month 2023 w/Black Cinema Collective
BLACK SONIC EVOLUTIONS 2023 x BLACK CINEMA COLLECTIVE
recommended reads x LOVING ROOM: diaspora books + salon
curated by owner, kristina clark
Titles available via the LOVING ROOM
we read FINDING FELA
Africa in Stereo: Modernism, Music, and Pan-African Solidarity by Tsitsi Ella Jaji
The African Imagination in Music by Kofi Agawu
Fela Anikulapo Kuti: Afrobeat, Rebellion, and Philosophy by Adeshina Afolayan (August 2023)
Fela: From West Africa to West Broadway ed. by Trevor Schoonmaker
For the Women and the Nation: Funmilayo Ransome Kuti of Nigeria by Cheryl Johnson-Odim & Nina Emma Mba
Queens of Afrobeat: Women, Play, and Fela Kuti’s Music Rebellion by Dotun Ayobade (March 2024)
we read BLACK MUSIC MONTH
grown folks
Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds by Jayna Brown
Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday by Angela Y. Davis
The Cricket: Black Music in Evolution ed. By Larry Neal
Flyboy 2: The Greg Tate Reader by Greg Tate
Meals, Music, and Muses: Recipes from My African American Kitchen by Alexander Smalls
Party Music: The Inside Story of the Black Panthers' Band and How Black Power Transformed Soul Music by Rickey Vincent
young ones
A is for Aretha by Leslie Kwan
Ellington Was Not a Street by Ntozake Shange
Nina: A Story of Nina Simone by Traci Todd
The Roots of Rap: 16 Bars on the 4 Pillars by Carole Boston Weatherford
BLACK SONIC EVOLUTIONS 2023
An annual programming that recognizes Black Music Month and AfroDiasporic sonic contributions to the world.
The Motherboard Suite
The Motherboard Suite at the Meany Center for the Performing Arts
April 1st, 2023, 8:00 pm
Performed by Saul Williams and collaborators
The West Coast premiere of this non-linear work is performed by Saul and his musical collaborators, and features seven choreographers — Maria Bauman, Kayla Farrish, Marjani Forté-Saunders, d. Sabela grimes, Jasmine Hearn, Shamel Pitts|TRIBE and Seattle choreographer Jade Solomon Curtis. Each choreographer is invited into the world of Williams’ exploration at the intersection of technology and race, exploitation and mystical anarchy, where hackers are artists and activists.
Directed & Produced
by Bill T. Jones
and New York Live Arts
Post show discussion moderated by BCC's Berette S Macaulay
NEPTUNE FROST Screenings
Screening at NW Film Forum
In-person only
March 29th – April 2nd
Dir. Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman
Co-presented with Black Cinema Collective,
Meany Center for the Performing Arts
& UW Simpson Center for the Humanities
France, Rwanda, USA
105 min · Kino Lober | Dedza Films
Languages: Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Swahili, French and English with English subtitles
Amidst the hilltops of Burundi, a collective of computer hackers emerges from within a coltan mining community, a result of the romance between a miner and an intersex runaway. Set between states of being—past and present, dream and waking life, colonized and free, male and female, memory and prescience—Neptune Frost is an invigorating and empowering direct download to the cerebral cortex and a call to reclaim technology for progressive political ends.
This program pairs with the West Coast premiere of Saul Williams's The Motherboard Suite which brings to life a suite of his music and poetry, directed and produced by Bill T. Jones in partnership with New York Live Arts.
OFF THE PAGE: an interdisciplinary poetry workshop + mixer
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.
NW Film Forum and *Kamari Bright present an offsite event of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Conference
Surprise Screening | AUDRE LORDE: THE BERLIN YEARS 1984-1992
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.
