- Description:
- DVD - Region free. viewing copy. 3 videodiscs of 3.
- Notes:
- “L.A. Rebellion” refers to a critical mass of filmmakers of African origin or descent who together produced a rich, innovative, and intellectually rigorous body of work, independent of any entertainment industry influence. Coming out of UCLA, they envisioned a new independent “Black” cinema sensitive to the real lives of Black communities in the United States and worldwide.
Supplemental materials include an essay by L.A. Rebellion curator and UCLA Film & Television Archive Director Jan Christopher Horak.
Titles
+ Diary of an African Nun, The
- Director:
- Dash, Julie
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 15 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- b/w
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1977
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- Drama, Female Directors, African - American Interest
- Notes:
- Based on a short story by Alice Walker, this intense, visually striking drama centers on the spiritual crisis faced by a Ugandan nun, played by LA Rebellion icon Barbara O. Jones.
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ African Woman, U.S.A.
- Director:
- Iloputaife, Ijeoma
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 28 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1980
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- Drama, African - American Interest, Female Directors
- Notes:
- African Woman USA tells the story of an African woman studying dance in the U.S. and working to support a daughter at home, along with two others back in Africa. After receiving a work permit she is ecstatic, but must battle both sexism and racism when looking for a job. Her troubles continue when a man posing as a producer betrays her. The film uses jazz and traditional African music to underscore the themes of friendship and danger that shape an African immigrant’s experience of America.
+ L.A. in my mind...
- Director:
- Makarah, O.Funmilayo
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 4 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 2006
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- Documentary, African - American Interest, Female Directors
- Notes:
- A captivating montage of notable Los Angeles sites, laced with free-floating names of places and people and accompanied by street noises, becomes a delightful and personal canon of spiritually sustaining quantities.
+ Black Art, Black Artists
- Director:
- Taylor, Elyseo J.
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 16 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1971
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- Documentary, African - American Interest
- Notes:
- An examination of contemporary African American artists in the 20th Century.
+ Festival of Mask
- Director:
- Amis, Don
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 25 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1982
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- Documentary, African - American Interest
- Notes:
- Filmmaker Don Amis was one of the very few Black student filmmakers at UCLA (including Carroll Parrott Blue and Denise Bean) working in a documentary mode. In this film, preparations, parade 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.
+ Bellydancing: A History and An Art
- Director:
- Dhanifu, Alicia
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 22 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1979
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- Documentary, Performance, African - American Interest, Female Directors
- Notes:
- Filmmaker Alicia Dhanifu, who appears in director Jamaa Fanaka’s Emma Mae, constructs a rigorous and beautifully rendered history of belly dancing — its roots and history, forms and meanings. The filmmaker performs this art as well, alone and with other dancers.
+ Water Ritual #1: An Urban Rite of Purification
- Director:
- McCullough, Barbara
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 6 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- b/w
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1979
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, African - American Interest, Female Directors
- Notes:
- Made in collaboration with performer Yolanda Vidato, Water Ritual #1 examines Black women’s ongoing struggle for spiritual and psychological space through improvisational, symbolic acts. Shot in 16mm black-and-white, the film was made in an area of Watts that had been cleared to make way for the I-105 freeway, but ultimately abandoned. Though the film is set in contemporary L.A., at first sight, Milanda and her environs (burnt-out houses overgrown with weeds) might seem to be located in Africa or the Caribbean, or at some time in the past. Structured as an Africanist ritual for Barbara McCullough’s “participant-viewers,” the film addresses how conditions of poverty, exploitation and anger render the Los Angeles landscape not as the fabled promised land for Black migrants, but as both cause and emblem of Black desolation.
+ Hour Glass
- Director:
- Gerima, Haile
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 13 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- color and b/w
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1971
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- African - American Interest, Female Directors
- Notes:
- A young African American male rethinks his role as a basketball player for white spectators as he begins reading the works of Third World theoreticians like Frantz Fanon, and contemplates the work of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Angela Davis. Highly metaphoric rather than realistic, Haile Gerima’s “Project One” (an early student film project at UCLA) visualizes through montage the process of coming to Black consciousness.
+ Your Children Come Back to You
- Director:
- Larkin, Alile Sharon
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 30 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- b/w
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1979
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- African - American Interest, Drama, Female Directors
- Notes:
- A girl pines for her ancestor's homeland, but modern problems (neighborhood conditions, her aunt's stronger connection to colonizing culture, the absence of her father) illicit a dream so troubling she must run.
+ Rich
- Director:
- Berry, S. Torriano
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 21 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- b/w
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1982
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- African - American Interest, Drama
- Notes:
- On the day of his high school graduation, an African American youth battles for self-determination as a convergence of forces, including his family and the neighborhood gang where he lives, attempt to shuttle him toward a future of lowered expectations. At once gritty and tender, the character study features an intimate scene shot chiaroscuro on location at the Watts Towers.
+ Single Parent: Images in Black, The
- Director:
- Bright, M. Stormé
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 21 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1978
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- African - American Interest, Documentary, Female Directors
- Notes:
- This documentary features interviews with black single parents.
+ Fragrance
- Director:
- Abel-Bey, Gay
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 38 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- color and b/w
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1985
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- African - American Interest, Drama, Female Directors
- Notes:
- When George visits his family before heading off to the Vietnam War, he is confronted by the conflicting ideals of his veteran father, who encourages his patriotism, and his militant brother, who urges him to stay home in protest. The complex issue of whether African Americans should be fighting for justice at home or abroad is registered most poignantly in the youngest son Bobby, a schoolboy torn between the political allegiances of his father and older brothers.
+ Dark Exodus
- Director:
- White, Iverson
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 28 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- b/w
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1985
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- African - American Interest, Drama - Historical
- Notes:
- Subjected to Jim Crow laws and an overtly racist white population that still sees Blacks as property, an African American family in the South sends its sons away to a better life. Visualizing the migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban, industrial North in sepia tones, director Iverson White’s period film captures the atmosphere of early 20th century America.
+ Shipley Street
- Director:
- Frazier, Jacqueline
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 25 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1981
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- African - American Interest, Drama, Female Directors
- Notes:
- A construction worker, frustrated with his inability to get ahead, decides with his wife to send their daughter to an all-white Catholic school, where the girl is confronted with harsh discipline and racist attitudes. Jacqueline Frazier’s film neatly encapsulates the unthinking, everyday racism of white institutions and their trafficking of offensive racial stereotypes, paying particular attention to their effects on young children.
+ Forbidden Joy
- Director:
- Sheen, Imelda
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 11 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1972
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- African - American Interest, Drama, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- In Forbidden Joy (1972), director Imelda Sheen utilizes many avant garde techniques to tell the mysterious story of a woman picnicking in a cemetery with a toddler by her side. The films plays with mood as it changes styles of music from African, to funk, to soul, to classical, while black-and-white footage shows us a glimpse of the rough streets in the woman’s past
+ Several Friends
- Director:
- Burnett, Charles
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 21 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1969
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- African - American Interest, Documentary
- Notes:
- Director Charles Burnett’s first 16mm student film, Several Friends, showcases his early facility with a documentary approach to fiction, his ability to draw out eccentric and endearing characterizations from an ensemble of nonprofessional actors, and his sensitivity to the expressive possibilities of everyday, working class props and locations.
+ Pocketbook, The
- Director:
- Woodberry, Billy
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 12 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- b/w
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1980
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- African - American Interest, Film Adaptation, Drama
- Notes:
- In the course of a botched purse-snatching, a boy questions the course of his life in this adaptation of Langston Hughes’ short story, "Thank You, Ma'am."
+ Little Off the Mark, A
- Director:
- Wheaton, Robert
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 9 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- b/w
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1986
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- African - American Interest, Romance, Drama
- Notes:
- Writer-director Robert Wheaton’s story of a shy guy, Mark (Parros), trying all the wrong moves to meet the right girl rides high on a romantic sensibility. Although at first it’s hard to imagine the handsome Mark having trouble with the ladies, Parros gives a charming performance as the nice guy who finishes last. UCLA’s north campus features prominently as this would-be Romeo’s ever-hopeful hunting ground.
+ Day in the Life of Willie Faust, or Death on the Installment Plan, A
- Director:
- Fanaka, James
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 16 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1972
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- African - American Interest, Film Adaptation, Experimental / Avant Garde, Exploitation
- Notes:
- Jamaa Fanaka’s first project plays off the Blaxploitation’s genre conventions, an adaption of Goethe’s “Faust” presented with a non-synchronous soundtrack and superimposed over a remake of Super Fly (1972). Often out of focus with an overactive camera, the film immediately exudes nervous energy, but unlike Priest’s elegant cocaine consumption in Super Fly, Willie’s arm gushes blood as he injects heroin. A morality tale in two reels.
+ Cycles
- Director:
- Davis, Zeinabu irene
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 16 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- b/w
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1986
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- African - American Interest, Female Directors, Drama
- Notes:
- As a woman anxiously awaits her overdue period, she performs African-based rituals of purification. She cleans house and body, and calls on the spirits (Orishas in the Yoruba tradition), receiving much needed inspiration and assurance in a dream. The film combines beautifully intimate still and moving images of the woman’s body and home space, along with playful stop-motion sequences.
+ Brick by Brick
- Director:
- Aina, Shirikiana
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 36 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1982
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- African - American Interest, Documentary, Female Directors
- Notes:
- Brick by Brick documents a late-’70s Washington, D.C., ignored by the media, from which poor Black residents are being pushed out. Images of monuments contrast with prescient images of gentrification and homelessness. An alternative is provided by the Seaton Street project, in which tenants united to purchase buildings. Participants discuss their effort as part of a worldwide struggle against displacement.
+ Daydream Therapy
- Director:
- Nicolas, Bernard
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 8 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- color and b/w
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1977
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- African - American Interest, Drama
- Notes:
- Daydream Therapy is set to Nina Simone’s haunting rendition of “Pirate Jenny” and concludes with Archie Shepp’s “Things Have Got to Change.” Filmed in Burton Chace Park in Marina del Rey by activist-turned-filmmaker Bernard Nicolas as his first project at UCLA, this short film poetically envisions the fantasy life of a hotel worker whose daydreams provide an escape from workplace indignities
+ As Above, So Below
- Director:
- Clark, Larry
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 52 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1973
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- African - American Interest, Drama
- Notes:
- A rediscovered masterpiece, director Larry Clark’s As Above, So Below comprises a powerful political and social critique in its portrayal of Black insurgency. The film opens in 1945 with a young boy playing in his Chicago neighborhood and then follows the adult Jita-Hadi as a returning Marine with heightened political consciousness. Like The Spook Who Sat By the Door and Gordon’s War, As Above, So Below imagines a post-Watts rebellion state of siege and an organized Black underground plotting revolution. With sound excerpts from the 1968 HUAC report "Guerrilla Warfare Advocates in the United States," As Above, So Below is one of the more politically radical films of the L.A. Rebellion.
+ Rain/(Nyesha)
- Director:
- Ballenger, Melvonna
- Production Co:
- UCLA School of Film and Television
- Running Time:
- Short. 16 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo
- Color:
- b/w
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1978
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- African - American Interest, Drama, Female Directors
- Notes:
- Director Melvonna Ballenger’s Rain (Nyesha) shows how awareness can lead to a more fulfilling life. In the film, a female typist goes from apathetic to empowered through the help of a man giving out political fliers on the street. Using John Coltrane’s song “After the Rain,” Ballenger’s narration of the film meditates on rainy days and their impact. The rain in this short film doesn’t signify defeat, but offers renewal and “a chance to recollect, a cool out.”