People and Places – The Land Beneath Our Feet
On Thursday, March 8, please join us in welcoming Emmanual Urey and Dr. Greg Mitman for a screening of their 2016 documentary, The Land Beneath Our Feet. Co- directed by Mitman with Sarita Siegel, The Land Beneath Our Feet follows US doctoral student Emmanual Urey’s return to Liberia with historical film footage offering new evidence of a 1926 corporate land grab. Mr. Urey and Dr. Mitman will be present to discuss the film following the screening.
This event takes place at 5:00 pm, Thursday, March 8, at the IU Libraries Screening Room (Wells 048).
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/166601524 Website: http://thelandbeneathourfeet.com
The screening is part of the IU African Studies Program’s event series, People and Places: Conversations about The Meaning of Land, centered around questions of 21st century land rights, land tenure, and land ownership around the globe. The Black Film Center/Archive is a co-sponsor of this program, with the Office of the Vice President for Diversity, Equity & Multicultural Affairs; College Arts & Humanities Institute (CAHI); Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies; Department of Folklore & Ethnomusicology; IU Libraries; Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center; and the Institute for Advanced Study.
Sketchy Humorists at SCMS 2018
BFC/A director Terri Francis will attend the 2018 conference of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies in Toronto from March 14-18. On Friday, March 16, at 1:15pm, Dr. Francis will chair the panel, Sketchy Humorists: Black Sexuality in the Comic Works of Spencer Williams, Josephine Baker, and Larry Fuller. Dr. Francis will also present her paper, “Josephine Baker’s Oppositional Burlesque: Strategic Incongruity and Film Pioneering,” along with papers by Jacqueline Stewart of the University of Chicago and Rebecca Wanzo of Washington University in St. Louis. Harvard University’s Glenda Carpio will participate as respondent.
This panel is sponsored by the Comedy and Humor Studies Scholarly Interest Group and the Oscar Micheaux Society of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.
The full 2018 Toronto conference program is now available online here: http://www.cmstudies.org/news/387544/2018-Toronto-Conference-Program-Now- Available.htm
Black Film: Nontheatrical – Ina Archer
The Black Film: Nontheatrical series, a partnership of the BFC/A and the IU Libraries Moving Image Archive, continues in March with a visit from Ina D. Archer of the Smithsonian Institution – National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC).
Archer will present two programs on March 22 at the IU Libraries Screening Room (Wells 048): At 2:15pm, What are we looking at? The (black) nontheatrical gaze; and at 6:00pm, What was I looking at? Recovering the neglected Archina Studio.
Ina Archer is a filmmaker and visual artist whose multimedia works and films have been shown nationally. She was a Studio Artist in the Whitney Independent Study program, a NYFA Fellow, and a 2005 Creative Capital grantee in film and video. Prior to joining NMAAHC as Media Conservation and Digitization Assistant, Archer was adjunct faculty at Parsons School for Design. She is the former co-chair of New York Women in Film and Television’s Women’s Film Preservation Fund. Archer earned a BFA in Film/Video from the Rhode Island School of Design and an M.A. in Cinema Studies at NYU. She studied Moving Image Archiving and Preservation at UCLA (MIAS) and NYU (MIAP). She is also a contributor to Film Comment and has written for Framework and Black Camera.
The Black Film: Nontheatrical series continues in April with a visit from Shani Miller of UCLA.
A Celebration of Ella Fitzgerald
Be sure to arrive early when the 1958 film, St. Louis Blues, comes to IU Cinema on March 19. The film begins at 7:00 pm but you’ll want to take a seat at 6:30 pm when jazz musician Monika Herzig and jazz vocalist Janiece Jaffe will offer a musical prelude in celebration of Ella Fitzgerald’s 100th birthday, performing beloved songs from Fitzgerald’s repertoire.
A musical biography of composer and musician W.C. Handy, St. Louis Blues features some of the most important African American stars of the mid-20th century: Nat ‘King’ Cole, Eartha Kitt, Cab Calloway, Mahalia Jackson, Pearl Bailey, Ruby Dee, and Ella Fitzgerald — performing “If Beale Street Could Talk” with the Memphis Jazz Quartet. This screening is sponsored by the Elizabeth Sage Historic Costume Collection, Pamela J. Schlick Fund, and IU Cinema.
Find a few moments to visit the Cinema’s lower lobby, where BFC/A archivist Ronda Sewald and Media School senior Elijah Pouges have curated a small exhibit of recent donations to the BFC/A from the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation.
Eve’s Bayou at IU Cinema
The BFC/A tips our hat to SPEA graduate student Phillisha Wathen for her upcoming Staff Selects presentation of Kasi Lemmons’s Eve’s Bayou. IU Cinema screens this modern classic in 35mm on Saturday, March 24, at 7:00 pm.
Coffee & Donuts
Coffee and Donuts at the BFC/A is fast on its way to cherished tradition status after just two months. Join us here again to share a morning treat with our director and staff on Tuesday, March 27, from 9:00-11:00 am.
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