Visiting Curator Greg de Cuir Jr. arrived in Bloomington yesterday for a week-long research residency at the Black Film Center/Archive and a series of programs beginning with the Avant-Noir screening tonight at the IU Cinema. Throughout the week, de Cuir will share notes and photos from his residency with our readers on the BFC/A blog.
Research residency begins right away at the Black Film Center/Archive, on arrival. Watched the animated short “Glucose” by Jeron Braxton, a former Indiana University student. Premiered at SXSW, playing next at Sundance. Shows talent, plus a sensibility for the political. Will mark him as one for further research.
Looks like I am assigned a conference room to carry out my research. Very comfortable. Love the big flatscreen. Love even more an oil portrait of a supporting actress from Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” hanging next to it. Arrived as part of the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame Collection. Provenance unknown, artist unknown. The label on the frame reads “Madame Sul-Te-Wan“. She reminds me of my Grandmother.
Saw Anthony Mann’s “Man of the West” in glorious 35mm at the even more glorious IU Cinema. Love Mann, mostly for his masterful classic noirs. What an odd, dark Western. Very honest in its brazen excuse to be an extended set-up for a violent confrontation.
~Greg de Cuir, Friday, January 19, 2018
Greg de Cuir Jr. is the selector for Alternative Film/Video and Beldocs (both in Belgrade, Serbia). As an independent moving image curator, he has organized programs for the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London; the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw; Los Angeles Filmforum; goEast Wiesbaden; Experiments in Cinema in Albuquerque; and other institutions. He is the managing editor of NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies and has published writing in Cineaste, Jump Cut, Festivalists, Art Margins, La Furia Umana, Politika, and other journals and volumes. De Cuir received his DPhil from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts at University of Arts Belgrade.
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