Race Swap film series at IU Cinema
Unearthing early roots of Jordan Peele’s political horror film Get Out (2017), Race Swap presents three cult films which similarly explore and exploit racial ideology. Combination science fiction, horror, and exploitation comedy films, they play on the supposedly irreducible fact of racial groups and the disgust/desire to get inside the body of the other. And yet in some ways, they picture a proposed new race relations in post-civil rights America that is imperfect and unsettling, but united nonetheless. Post-film discussions with IU faculty will follow all screenings.
This partnership is supported through IU Cinema’s Creative Collaborations program.
This series is sponsored by the Black Film Center/Archive, Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society, Cinema and Media Studies, and IU Cinema. Screenings are free, but ticketed. Visit the IU Cinema website for more information. The series begins Friday, January 12, with Melvin Van Peebles’ Watermelon Man (1970), presented in a 16mm print from the BFC/A collection
BFC/A 2018 Visiting Research Fellowships
The Black Film Center/Archive in The Media School at Indiana University-Bloomington is pleased to announce 2018 Black Film Center/Archive Visiting Research Fellowships to support research toward a dissertation, thesis, publication, presentation, or production. These competitive fellowships for visiting researchers residing outside the Bloomington area are intended to advance the study of black film and media and to promote research in the collections at the BFC/A by filmmakers, graduate students, independent scholars, and faculty members at any rank. Scholars and filmmakers currently working or studying at an HBCU are strongly encouraged to apply. Applications are due by February 15, 2018.
Curator Greg de Cuir Jr. at BFC/A and IU Cinema
The Black Film Center/Archive welcomes Greg de Cuir for a workshop and screening series organized around de Cuir’s week-long research residency at the BFC/A. This series is sponsored by the Black Film Center/Archive, College Arts and Humanities Institute, Underground Film Series, Center for Documentary Research and Practice, Cinema and Media Studies, and IU Cinema.
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.
Cheryl Dunye: Blurring Distinctions
Cheryl Dunye emerged as part of the New Queer Cinema movement of young film and video makers in the 1990s. Dunye’s work is defined by her distinctive narrative voice. Often set within a personal or domestic context, her stories foreground issues of race, sexuality, and identity. Dunye’s narratives are peppered with deconstructive elements with characters directly addressing the camera and making ironic references to the production itself.
The effect of these devices, and of Dunye’s appearance in her films and tapes as herself, is to blur the distinctions between fiction and real life. Dunye has made over 15 films including Mommy is Coming, The Owls, My Baby’s Daddy, and HBO’s Stranger Inside, which garnered her an Independent Spirit Award nomination for best director. Her debut feature, The Watermelon Woman, was awarded the Teddy at the Berlinale in 1996 and was recently restored by Outfest’s UCLA Legacy Project for the film’s 20th anniversary.
Dunye has received numerous awards and honors for her work including a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship. She is also a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Presently, Dunye is a professor in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University, and her most recent directorial work includes episodes of Queen Sugar, The Fosters, and Claws. She is currently at work on her next film, Black is Blue, a feature-length adaptation of her 2014 short film.
This series is sponsored by IU Cinema, Black Film Center/Archive, and Bloomington PRIDE. Screenings are free, but ticketed. For more information, visit the IU Cinema website.
Leave a Reply