Shorts Program 4

Filmmaker Monona Wali in person!
Introduction by Sergio Mims, co-founder and co-programmer of Chicago’s Black Harvest Film Festival

These works foreground a variety of creative practices – drawing, photography, dancing, mask-making and tv production – illustrating how Black artistic expression (particularly by Black women) can provide joy, comfort and historical connection, while running the risk of being misinterpreted and misused.

A Different Image  -  new print!
Yearning to be recognized for more than her physical attributes, an African American woman living away from her family in Los Angeles aspires to a relationship where romance is not a factor, seeking someone who can "see her as she is" rather than see only what he wants to see.
(Alile Sharon Larkin, 1982, 16mm, 51 min)

Cycles
Anxiously awaiting her overdue period, a woman performs African-based rituals of purification as director Zeinabu irene Davis combines beautifully intimate still and moving images with playful stop-motion sequences.
(Zeinabu irene Davis, 1989, video from 16mm, 17 min)

Grey Area
From yuppies to Black Panthers, several members of a blighted neighborhood debate the causes and experience the stresses of cyclical poverty, as a monolithic bank commissions a film about its own supposedly good work in the community.
(Monona Wali, 1981, 16mm, 38 min)

[Intermission]

Bellydancing: A History & an Art
Director Alicia Dhanifu creates a rigorous and beautifully rendered history of belly dancing, its roots, forms and meanings.
(Alicia Dhanifu, 1979, video from 1” tape, 22 min)

Festival of Mask
Preparations, parades and performances from the Craft and Folk Art Museum's annual Festival of Mask illustrate L.A.'s diverse racial and ethnic communities (African, Asian, Latin American) expressing themselves through a shared traditional form.
(Don Amis, 1982, video from 16mm, 25 min)

Sponsors
Presented in association with UCLA Film & Television Archive and supported in part by grants from the Getty Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The series is curated by Allyson Nadia Field, Jan-Christopher Horak, Shannon Kelley and Jacqueline Stewart. Complete details on UCLA’s L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema initiative here.

University of Chicago Arts Council, Franke Institute for the Humanities, Tom Gunning/Mellon Fund, UC Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture, Logan Center for the Arts, Conversations at the Edge, Block Cinema, Black Cinema House.