“The blues connects all my work on home movies, Caribbean cinema and experimental film.”– Terri Francis Last week, part one of my interview with IU professor Terri Francis, founder of the Afrosurrealist Film Society, focused on “Afrosurrealism” as a conceptual framework and highlighted the work of Akosua Adoma Owusu, the first visiting filmmaker of the series…. Read more »
Black Film Center & Archive
New DVDs at the BFC/A: Spotlight on Amma Asante’s "Belle"
In a scene from Amma Asante’s stunning period drama Belle (2013), based on true events, the young daughter of an enslaved woman from the West Indies and a British naval officer studies the portrait gallery in her opulent new English home. One painting in particular, featuring an aristocratic male in powdered wig and pastel silk… Read more »
Chicago's Black Cinema House to screen films by Alile Sharon Larkin & Julie Dash this Friday, Jan. 16
Black Cinema House will screen Alile Sharon Larkin’s 1979 short film Your Children Come Back to You (16mm print courtesy of the Black Film Center/ Archive), followed by Julie Dash’s recently remastered Illusions (1982) this Friday, January 16, 7PM. Still from Larkin’s Your Children Come Back to You Both Larkin and Dash earned their MFA… Read more »
BLACK CAMERA Vol. 6, No. 1 Now Available
The latest issue of Black Camera: An International Film Journal is now available in print and online from the Indiana University Press. The issue includes an extensive special feature, “Ava DuVernay in conversation with Michael T. Martin — ‘A Call to Action’: Organizing Principles of an Activist Cinematic Practice,” drawn from discussions held during DuVernay’s… Read more »
Final week of “Still: Adele Stephenson and the Art of Film,” featuring art from Black Camera and the Black Film Center/ Archive, through Oct. 17
“Through exploring the visual materiality of the world that surrounds us I try to make the insignificant significant and reveal the hidden tensions between the material and the imagined.” –Adele Stephenson A striking film poster often frames or shapes our experience of a movie well before we enter the theater. When we recall movies that… Read more »
BFC/A staffer Joyce Bevins wins film award
The Black Film Center/Archive congratulates Joyce “Eli” and Jean “Lu” Bevins on receiving the Elfenworks Social Justice Award from the Campus MovieFest Hollywood (CMF) for their short film, Systematic Living. Eli, a second-year Masters student in the Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing, recently joined the BFC/A staff as a summer archive assistant. Campus… Read more »
Tanya Valette presents DR shorts at IU Cinema
Earlier this semester the BFC/A presented “Roots/Routes: Contemporary Caribbean Cinema” at the IU Cinema. This weekend Bloomington audiences will have another opportunity to appreciate the dynamism of filmmaking in the region with Saturday’s Dominican short film program during the Latino Film Festival and Conference. Tanya Valette, currently the artistic director and head of programming at… Read more »
Visiting Filmmaker Tunde Kelani Presents MAAMi Tonight!
At 7pm this evening at the IU Cinema, Director Tunde Kelani will present his 2011 feature film MAAMi. The screening is free and the film will be followed by a Q&A session with the filmmaker. During his visit to Indiana University, Kelani will also participate the workshop program, “Digital Paradox: Piracy, Ownership, and the Constraints… Read more »
Fall Preview: BFC/A and IU Cinema Showcase Ava DuVernay + AFFRM
This September, the BFC/A will kick off our fall 2013 program with a seven-film series at the IU Cinema and other venues, featuring the work of Ava DuVernay and her pioneering theatrical distribution partnership AFFRM (African American Film Festival Releasing Movement). Named as one of Indiewire’s inaugural group of 40 Influencers, DuVernay is scheduled to… Read more »
BFC/A's Jordache Ellapen Receives SSRC Fellowship
The Black Film Center/Archive congratulates our Research Assistant Jordache Ellapen, a Ph.D. student in the Department of American Studies at Indiana University, on his receipt of a Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF) through the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). The Social Science Research Council is an independent non-profit international organization that works with practitioners, policymakers,… Read more »