Welcome, 2023!
Happy New Year to you and your families, from all of ours! Thanks again for all of your love and support in 2022! We hope that you’ve had a great year and wish you the best into the new year, as well!
The Black Film Center & Archive is back to normal business hours and look forward to seeing you all, soon!
The Black Film Center & Archive Presents: Black Filmmaking Interviews
Did you know that, in addition to film-related items, the BFCA also archives substantial collections of interview recordings? These rare and often one-of-a-kind recordings document the voices and stories of hundreds of luminaries from Black film history, from screenwriters and directors to actors, critics, and scholars. Many of these recordings have been published to IU’s digital collections repository Media Collections Online, but staff at the BFCA are continually working to transcribe and publicize more interviews from our collections for the public to discover.
Once per month from January to July 2023, the BFCA will be publishing one filmmaker interview from our collections. We kick off January with a conversation with filmmaker, historian, and writer S. Torriano Berry, recorded during his visit to the IU-Bloomington campus in November 2002. The co-author of The 50 Most Influential Black Films (2001) and director of films such as The Embalmer (1996), Berry has been a central figure in independent film for more than five decades, and as a film professor at Howard University from 1990 to 2016, he mentored and influenced hundreds of emerging BIPOC film artists. The BFCA’s S. Torriano Berry Collection collects various publications and interviews from Berry’s career, including compilations of Howard University student film work that he helped oversee.
Access the interview with Berry at this link, and stay tuned for further interview releases in coming months.
Screening of Summer of Soul
On Saturday, January 21, the BFCA will be hosting a screening of Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s Oscar-winning documentary Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021) in the Wells Library Screening Room. Chronicling the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, the film showcases stunning footage of performances by artists like Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, and the Staple Singers that had not been widely available for over 50 years.
This screening is sponsored by the Indiana University NAACP, Monroe County NAACP, the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center, and Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies. A discussion panel will follow the screening, featuring Dr. Audrey McCluskey (former BFCA director and AAADS Professor Emerita), Dr. Olivia Ekeh (Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Race and History), and Brother William Morris (attorney and host of the WFIU radio program Soul Kitchen).
This event is free, but ticketed. Visit https://events.iu.edu/libraries/event/820467-1 for details.
BFCA co-sponsors Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts
For the spring 2023 term, the BFCA is proud to cosponsor the University of Chicago’s Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts. The event commemorates an historic 1976 festival of the same name, held at New York’s Women’s Interart Center, that brought together pioneering groups of Black feminist artists and activists to celebrate, analyze, and advocate for the then-emerging body of work by Black women filmmakers. The first festival focused on Black feminist film issues (predating the rise in Black women filmmaking output in the 1980s and 1990s), this ‘76 event featured screenings, performances, lectures, and panel discussions with figures such as Camille Billops, Monica Freeman, Madeline Anderson, Ayoka Chenzira, Carol Munday Lawrence, and many others.
The 2023 Sojourner Truth Festival includes a free nine-week “open classroom” series of screenings and discussions held in conjunction with Dr. Allyson Nadia Field’s University of Chicago course on 1970s Black Women’s Filmmaking. From March 2-4, the series concludes with a symposium of keynote lectures and roundtable discussions with both original festival participants and contemporary directors exploring the past, present, and future of Black women filmmaking. In addition to contributing films and research assistance for the event, the BFCA plans to host a workshop on archival practices led by interim director Rachael Stoeltje, as well as virtual class visits with students from the University of Chicago and University of Iowa.
Please visit https://voices.uchicago.edu/sojourner for more info on this special event, including screening dates and symposium participants. Consider joining if you are in or near the Chicago area!
BFCA partners with Cicada Cinema on screening of Love Jones (1997)
On Sunday, February 5, at 8pm, Cicada Cinema and the BFCA will be screening the 1997 classic Love Jones at the Blockhouse Bar in downtown Bloomington. Starring Lorenz Tate and Nia Long, Love Jones follows an aspiring writer and photographer as they embark on a steamy long-distance relationship while trying to figure out if they’ve got a “love thing” or are just “kicking it.” Cicada Cinema is a volunteer-run and community driven, local pop-up cinema with the mission to provide high-quality screenings of underrepresented cinema. If you would like to learn more about their programming, you can visit their website: cicadacinema.com.
Bridgett M. Davis to visit in February
In February, the BFCA welcomes back director and author Bridgett M. Davis for a special 25th anniversary screening of her feature Naked Acts (1996). A landmark feminist exploration of Black women’s sexuality and body image, Davis’s film captures a crucial period in ‘90s independent cinema as many filmmakers were starting to produce more nuanced representations of Black life beyond the constraints of Hollywood or the “urban decay” stereotypes popularized by ‘70s Blaxploitation. Long difficult to find, Naked Acts will screen at the IU Cinema on February 23. A Q&A with Bridgett Davis and IU Prof. Elena Guzman will follow the show.
Info and ticketing information available here. A special exhibit from the BFCA including original materials from the production of Naked Acts will be available to view in the IU Cinema’s basement level.
Pop-up Exhibit at the Lilly Library
On Wed, February 15, IU’s Lilly Library (in partnership with the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center) will host a Black History Month pop-up exhibit highlighting the history and legacy of the Black Panther Party. The BFCA will be contributing materials to the exhibit, with our archivists onsite to answer questions.
Exhibit exploration will run from 5:00-6:00pm at the Lilly Library. A faculty talk with Dr. Jakobi Williams, chair of the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies, will follow the exhibit from 6:00-7:00pm, proceeded by a reception at the Neal-Marshall Bridgewaters Lounge.
Social media highlights
Euzhan Palcy
On January 13, we wished happy birthday to trailblazing director Euzhan Palcy (born 1958)! Raised in Martinique in the French West Indies, Palcy took the international film scene by storm in 1983 with her anti-colonial, social realist debut feature Sugar Cane Alley. With her follow-up A Dry White Season (1989), Palcy became the first Black woman director with a film produced by a major Hollywood studio.
One of the world’s most celebrated filmmakers, Palcy’s work is widely studied in cinema and African studies courses, and her many achievements include being the first female jury president of the FESPACO film festival (2013). In her 2022 Honorary Oscar acceptance speech, Madame Palcy continued to raise her voice against industry myths that “Black is not bankable” and advocate for the humanitarian potentials of filmmaking: “With my camera, I don’t shoot; I heal.”
(Publicity photos of Palcy and poster of Sugar Cane Alley from the Black Film Center & Archive’s Josef Gugler Collection)
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