Director’s Open House featuring Demetrius Witherspoon January 23rd, 2024
Happy New Year to you and your families! We’re excited about what this new year will bring and look forward to seeing you! Our first big event of the year will be our Director’s Open House Tuesday, January 23rd at 11:30am in the Phyllis Klotman Classroom, Wells Library 044B. Indianapolis-based filmmaker Demetrius Witherspoon will share his talk “How to Build a Sci-Fi Film Franchise on a Low Budget.” Please see the flyer for more information and join us for great conversation over great food. Make yourself at home!
Black History Month 2024: Meet Us at the Movies!!
The Indiana University Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center, Black Film Center and Archive, and City of Bloomington invite you to celebrate Black cinema this Black History Month! From the stage to the screen, Black actors, filmmakers, writers, and directors have left an indelible mark not only on the entertainment industry, but most importantly, on our own lives. They have inspired us to tell our stories, to preserve historical moments, to celebrate Black love and Black joy, to laugh out loud, and to channel our passion and energy into causes greater than ourselves. And of course, they remind us of the brilliance that is Black artistry, encouraging us to take our rightful place on the big screen because we deserve it. From classics that take us back to our childhoods and span generations to contemporary takes on films that allow us to (re)imagine our Black futures, we are rolling the credits all Black History Month and giving a standing ovation to our favorites in Black cinema. Let’s go to the movies!
Kickoff: Blaxploitation: Then and Now, by Dr. Novotny Lawrence; Progressive Tour around the BFCA – January 31, 2024 – 6:00pm
We’re starting the Black History Month celebrations a day early. Can you dig it!? BFCA Director Dr. Novotny Lawrence will give a talk on the Blaxploitation Movement and its lasting influence on contemporary pop culture. Come dressed in your 1970s threads as an ode to the movement. We’ll also have archival items especially curated for the event on display throughout the BFCA.
Black Film Center & Archive presents Will 4K Restoration World Premiere – February 1, 2024 – 7:00pm This Will screening is free; however, to manage capacity, tickets are required to gain . Tickets are available here: https://am.ticketmaster.com/iucinema/buy
Join us Thursday, February 1st at 7pm at the IU Cinema for the world premiere 4K restoration of Jessie Maple’s landmark film Will (1981), with Q&A to follow! Shot on a microbudget and rarely screened since its original release, Will is recognized as the earliest surviving independent feature-length film directed by a Black American woman. The story follows the day-to-day life of the eponymous character as he invests the last of his waning athleticism into coaching a girls’ basketball team and navigating his loving wife’s suspicions that he’s using heroin—again. When Will meets Little Brother, a 12-year-old wise beyond his pre-teen existence who partakes in adult vices, he begins mentoring the youth and also starts to more seriously address his own sobriety. [80 min; drama; English]
The Will (1981) restoration was a joint project between the Black Film Center & Archive (BFCA), the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture’s Time-based Media Archives & Conservation staff, and Center for African American Media Arts. The source material used for the restoration was a 16mm color print held by the BFCA at Indiana University. The print was donated to the BFCA in 2005 by the director, Jessie Maple, and is preserved within the larger Jessie Maple Collection. Restoration work was completed from 2020-2023, with generous funding provided by: the SI-NMAAHC Robert Frederick Smith Center for the Digitization and Curation of African American History; Prasad (image restoration); ColorLab (film scanning, color grading, and laboratory services); and Audio Mechanics (audio mastering).
We look forward to honoring Mrs. Jessie Maple Patton with this inaugural screening of the restored version of Will. There is a hotel block available at IU’s Biddle Hotel for out-of-town guests. Please email bfca@indiana.edu to let us know if you would like to attend and to reserve a room. (The hotel block dates are from January 30th – February 2nd, to allow guests to reserve rooms if they are interested in attending the Black History Month Kickoff event at the BFCA on January 31st. Please note: The room block expires on January 16th.)
African American Read-IN – February 2, 2024 – 11:00am – Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center – Grand Hall
In conjunction with a national effort, the Indiana University School of Education will host an African American Read-In at the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center. The Read-In is part of the National African American Read-In Chain sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English. Education faculty and students will join local high school students in reading selected poems and passages by African American authors.
NMBCC Black Lit – February 2, 2024 – 6:00pm – Cook Center
The Black Lit Reading is another staple event on the Black History Month calendar, hosted by the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center Library. In recent years, the Cook Center has expanded it into a month-long exhibit featuring work by local writers and artists. The audience is often invited to share as well before the close of the event, so bring a poem of your own!
B(l)ack in the Day – Lunch and Learn – February 7, 2024 – 12:00pm – Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center – Bridgwater’s Lounge & NMBCC 2nd Floor
Let’s venture back down memory lane and introduce artifacts, historical items, and retro food from Black cinema programming and films! Some items you’ll be able to pick-up and touch, while others will be view access only. The BFCA & NMBCC Family looks forward to seeing you there!
NMBCC & BFCA presents Karaoke Black Movie Soundtrack Edition – February 7, 2024 – 7pm – Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center – Grand Hall
Bring your friends and join us for Karaoke – Black Movie Soundtrack Edition!! We can sing along to our favorite movies with our community and have some fun! What’s your favorite song from your favorite movie?? Let us know and let us hear it!
Black Market – February 17, 2024, 10:00am – 2:00pm; City Hall – Both floors & Council Chambers – 401 N. Morton Street, Bloomington, IN
This event will feature a coalition of organizations, Black-owned businesses, Black creators, and artists. It will also, provide a medium for local talent, business owners, and groups to share information and sell goods. The Black History Month “Black Market” pays homage to the original Black Market that was located in downtown Bloomington and was destroyed by a firebomb on December 26, 1968. Our staff looks forward to hosting an informational table about the only repository in the world that is solely dedicated to the collection and preservation of all things Black Cinema, the Black Film Center & Archive.
African American Choral Ensemble Black History Month Performance – February 21, 2024, 11:45am; School of Education Atrium
In celebration of Black History Month, the IU School of Education will hold a performance by the African American Choral Ensemble on February 21st, 2024, at 11:45am. According to the African American Arts Institute, the critically acclaimed African American Choral Ensemble helps to preserve the legacy and influence of African American choral music through their interpretations of this unique art form.
Founded in 1975, the ensemble features a broad range of spiritual and contemporary gospel music along with formally composed works by Black composers. IU professor of practice Dr. Raymond Wise instructs the ensemble.
The African American Choral Ensemble is offered as a credit-bearing course through IU’s Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies.Free and open to the public, the performance will take place in the Wendell W. Wright Education Building in the atrium.
Black Knowledge Bowl – February 21, 2024, 6:00pm; Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center – Grand Hall
This 40+ year tradition at the center is an opportunity for students to test their knowledge of Black history and culture. The “Jeopardy” television show format is used to quiz teams on various categories of knowledge.
20th Annual Black History Month Gala – February 24, 2024, 6:00pm; Woolery Mill – BFCA Director Dr. Lawrence will be the Emcee – Tickets will be available on February 1st.
The gala offers an opportunity to acknowledge, honor, and celebrate the accomplishments of African Americans who have devoted their time, talents, and resources to make a difference in the Bloomington community and beyond. The 20th edition is sure to be a night to remember—especially with Dr. Novotny Lawrence on the mic as emcee! Tickets will be available starting February 1.
The Kick It… Black Cinema, Black Love, and Food – February 28, 2024, 7:00pm; State Room East in the Indiana Memorial Union – BFCA’s Publication and Programming Associate, Essence London will host. – RSVP Link will be available on February 1st.
The Kick It is a curated space to chill. We’ll feed you good food, screen clips from some of your favorite films, and have activities inspired by the Black Film Center & Archive’s zine. The newest issue is themed Black love so bring your boo, or your closest friends! The RSVP link goes live February 1.
Lecture New Black Genres by Rebecca Wanzo – February 29, 2024, 11:30am – 12:30pm; Black Film Center & Archive – Phyllis Klotman Classroom
Dr. Rebecca Wanzo is Chair and Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, and author of both The Suffering Will Not Be Televised: African American Women and Sentimental Political Storytelling (SUNY Press, 2009) and The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging (NYU Press, 2020). Her research interests include African American literature and culture, critical race theory, fan studies, feminist theory, the history of popular fiction in the United States, cultural studies, theories of affect, and graphic storytelling. She has published in venues such as American Literature, Camera Obscura, differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, Signs, Women and Performance, and numerous edited collections. She has also written essays for media outlets such as CNN, the LA Review of Books, Huffington Post, The Conversation, and the comic book Bitch Planet. Visit https://www.rebeccawanzo.com for more information.
BFCA @ Franklin Hall Screenings – All February 2024 – The Media School’s Franklin Hall Commons
In celebration of Black History Month, the BFCA is programming a series of pop-up screenings of films from our collections on the 24×12 foot video wall in the Franklin Hall Commons. (Schedule below)
Naked Acts Restoration
Maya Cade, creator of the online Black Film Archive, visited the Black Film Center & Archive again in the Fall of 2022. She watched and, in her words, “fell in love with Bridgett M. Davis’s brilliant Naked Acts (1995),” and also screened other films. BFCA Finance & Administrator Ja Quita Joy Roberts connected Maya with Bridgett, and shortly after, work began on restoring and redistributing the film with Milestone Films and Kino Lorber International!! The restoration was sourced from production materials and film elements from Naked Acts that Ms. Davis donated to the BFCA in 2013 as part of the Bridgett Davis Collection.
The BFCA is excited to announce the completion of Milestone’s restoration of Naked Acts, which will premiere at the 53rd International Film Festival Rotterdam, January 25 – February 4, 2024. A pioneering work of Black feminist filmmaking and featuring performances by Jake-Ann Jones, Renee Cox, and the recently departed Ron Cephas Jones, Naked Acts has long been difficult to find. We are excited for the film to finally receive wider distribution and thank everyone who made this restoration possible! Congratulations, Bridgett!
New Perspectives on Sembène’s Novels: Le Docker noir and Les Bouts de bois de Dieu
The Center of Excellence of the French Embassy at IU invites attendees to the roundtable, Friday, January 12th, 2024, 4-5pm EST, GA 3134 and via Zoom webinar (link – password: hoosiers).
Sponsors: The Center of Excellence of the French Embassy at IU and the Mary-Margaret Barr Koon Fund of the Department of French and Italian, with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States.
Senegalese author and filmmaker Sembène Ousmane’s literary work is voluminous, complex, and visionary, comprising eight novels and sixteen short stories written between 1956 and 1996. Two of his most brilliant and political novels, Le Docker noir and Les Bouts de bois de Dieu, were written while he worked in the port of Marseille in the 1950s. His pan-African political convictions were driven by a desire to improve working-class conditions, both in mainland France and in French West Africa. This multi-faceted discussion will cover topics such as archival research, political praxis, and literary analysis and provide a unique opportunity to learn more about a Francophone African author and filmmaker whose archives are held at the Lilly Library of Rare Books and Manuscripts at Indiana University – Bloomington. Invited speakers Dr. Valérie Berty (NYU Paris) and publisher Dr. Renaud Boukh recently collaborated on a new critical edition of Le Docker noir and will address Sembène’s work from both an archival and a literary perspective. While Boukh’s intervention will treat the significance of document-based research to grasping the radicalism and militant training of the author, Berty’s research delves into Sembène’s use of narrative strategies, thematic choices, formal elements, and characters to go beyond the realities of the contemporary period. Dr. Eileen Julien, Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature, French and Italian, and African Studies at Indiana University – Bloomington, will join the roundtable discussion as a respondent.
Valérie Berty holds a Ph.D in the Sociology of Literature from the Ecole de Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences) in Paris. She teaches literature and cinema at New York University Paris as well as French language courses. Dr. Berty has long specialized in African literature and cinema, having published a collective volume on writers-filmmakers and, in 2019, the book Sembène Ousmane (1923-2007): un homme debout: écrivain, cinéaste et humaniste.
Renaud Boukh is a publisher and translator. A specialist of Latin-American literatures, he translated the work of Joaquin Pasos, Ariana Daniele, Ronaldo Menéndez, and Enrique Vila-Matas. In 2017, he co-founded Héliotropismes, a Marseille-based publishing company with a mission to promote minority themes, including the French versions of Princesa by Fernanda Farias de Albuquerque & Maurizio Iannelli and Romance in Marseille by Claude McKay. He is also a publisher at Héliotropismes, where he recently released a new critical edition of Ousmane Sembène’s first novel, Le Docker Noir.
Eileen Julien is Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature, French and Italian, and African Studies at Indiana University – Bloomington. Among her publications are essays on Josephine Baker’s French films of the 1930s, the 1956 Présence Africaine “Black Men of Culture” conference in Paris, the “extroverted” African novel, the poetics of Frantz Fanon’s writing, a 1992 monograph, African Novels and the Question of Orality and a memoir, Travels with Mae: Scenes from a New Orleans Girlhood (2009). She was Founding Director of the West African Research Center, Dakar and recently curated an exhibit in Dakar of works by Kalidou Sy, former director of Senegal’s Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts (2022). She is the Africa regional editor for the four volume Literature, A World History (Wiley-Blackwell, 2022).
Other Exciting 2024 Upcoming Events
This spring, the BFCA will host the following events:
- The National Traveling Series: We will screen a selection of shorts and feature films from the New York African Film Festival.
- Screening: We’ll host documentarian, Kathe Sandler and screen a new restoration of Kathe Sandler’s poignant documentary exploring colorism, A Question of Color (1993). The screening will be followed by a Q & A with Sandler.
- Branching Out!: The BFCA will partner with the Center for Black Literature & Culture for a screening to celebrate Juneteenth!
Be on the lookout for more details about these and other upcoming BFCA events!
Kan-Kan and The Color Purple
December 26, 2023, BFCA staff and guests attended the Kan-Kan Cinema & Brasserie‘s premiere of The Color Purple (Blitz Bazawule). The arthouse theater, located in Indianapolis, honors beloved Hoosier novelist Kurt Vonnegut with its name: a “kan-kan” is an object in the world of Cat’s Cradle (1963) that brings people together who are cosmically linked. Many thanks to Executive Director Angela Northington for inviting us into the fold and for the hospitality!
Dr. Novotny Lawrence, BFCA Director, also gives insight to the latest version of The Color Purple and how it compares to Steven Spielberg’s 1985 adaptation, in a new article from Yahoo! The Compromises Of ‘The Color Purple’ (yahoo.com)
Social Media Highlights
Numa Perrier
December 14 marked the birthday of multi-talented actor, artist, and filmmaker Numa Perrier (born 1979)! A co-founder of the Black & Sexy TV collective, Ms. Perrier has dedicated her career to producing progressive, sex-positive stories through a Black feminist lens. Her feature-length, directorial debut Jezebel (2019), based on her experiences as a cam model, opened to wide acclaim at SXSW 2019, and her follow-up, The Perfect Find (2023), premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June, and is currently streaming on Netflix. In 2019, Ms. Perrier visited Indiana University to screen Jezebel and to lead a MasterClass at the IU Cinema.
Marpessa Dawn
On January 3, we wished happy birthday to actor/singer Marpessa Dawn (1934-2008)! Born in Pittsburgh and of African American and Filipino heritage, Ms. Dawn relocated to France as a teenager where she enjoyed a career as a nightclub performer and occasional actor. Ms. Dawn’s film legacy was cemented in 1959 with her starring role as Eurydice in Marcel Camus’s Palm d’Or and Oscar-winning romantic drama Black Orpheus. A November 1959 profile in Ebony magazine boldly proclaimed that Ms. Dawn was one of the great screen beauties of her day, noting, “She has the graceful locomotion of Audrey Hepburn [and] the svelte attack of Eartha Kitt.”
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