Streams of Memories — 28-30 January 2022

A free online screening programme of Black experimental cinema curated by CAS as part of a residency with The Showroom at Metroland Studio


Schedule:

S. Pearl SharpBack Inside Herself, 1984, 4 minutes

Barbara McCulloughWater Ritual #1: An urban rite of purification, 1979, 6 minutes

Kym RagusaDemarcations, 1992, 5 minutes

Omah DieguAfrican Women, U.S.A., 1980, 20 minutes

Martina AttilleDreaming Rivers, 1988, 30 minutes

Please note that Demarcations (1992) and African Woman, U.S.A (1980) contain references to rape so viewer discretion is advised.

Please note that you must book via the eventbrite link below.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/streams-of-memories-tickets-230343442437

About this event

Streams of Memories is a free online screening programme curated by us at the culmination of our curatorial research residency with The Showroom at Metroland Studio, Kilburn, 2021.

The programme presents five experimental short films by S. Pearl Sharp, Barbara McCullough, Kym Ragusa, Omah Diegu, and Martina Attille; exploring the ways in which these experimental filmmakers weave and unravel stories, fears and hopes across the African continent and diaspora, between generations and over time.

Each film touches upon the sociality and sensuality of gathering; heightened by being shown together as part of this programme in company and dialogue with one another. S. Pearl Sharp’s film Back Inside Herself (1984) is a visual poem on self-invention and shows a Black woman finding her own sense of self while rejecting white hegemonic societal expectations of who she should be and how she should behave. Barbara McCullough extends the poetics of cinema in Water Ritual #1: An urban rite of purification (1979) to enact the spiritual and psychological journey of a Black woman as she (re)connects with the African continent and the Caribbean on a cosmological level. A different sense of wandering and wondering is conveyed in Kym Ragusa’s Demarcations (1992) through mediations on how the trauma of rape leaves its inflictions on the body yet does not determine self-identity. African Women, U.S.A. (1980) by Omah Diegu further explores misogynoir and transnational complexities by addressing family, labour and gender power relations. Dreaming Rivers (1988) by Martina Attille reflects and recalls the ghosts of love, loss and kinship.

Together these short films pull, release and upsurge the histories, experiences and lives of Black women. Rather than merely presenting how they are viewed, particularly by the white gaze, these films - or memories - intervene in dominant Western cinematic aesthetics and redirect vision towards how Black women themselves view the structures, relations and intimacies of their lives. These five filmmakers look at the camera not for recognition, but to confront and impose their looking onto and against the camera.

It is this ambivalence to visibility and wildness to capture that led us to accompany the screening programme with the essay Why Black Cinema? (1987) by the late poet, writer, and social activist Toni Cade Bambara. The text and film programme will be discussed in an accompanying reading group at The Showroom. This follows our s ongoing work to both explore and host discussion framed by the intersectional relations between contemporary art practice and (Black) literary theory.

The programme is free to attend, although booking via Eventbrite will be essential. after which you will receive a link to watch the films online over full the screening programme weekend, Friday 28–Sunday 30 January 2022.

With thanks to each of the filmmakers and to distributors Cinenova, Third Worlds Newsreel, UCLA Film Archive and LUX.

About CAS

CAS is an interdisciplinary curatorial platform founded in 2013 that foregrounds archival research to facilitate institutional as well as public awareness and engagement with past and present artistic productions from the African continent and diaspora. Core to CAS’s work is creating access to these knowledge productions and artistic curricula, including hosting trans-geographical dialogues that centre critical pedagogies and decolonial paradigms to bring into focus the historiography, theory, and practices of Black cultural workers for exhibition projects and public programming.

About Awa Konaté

Awa Konaté is a London and Copenhagen based curator, researcher, and founder of CAS. Her curatorial practice foregrounds archives, decolonial thought, and interdisciplinary frameworks of artistic productions from the African continent and diaspora with a focus on lens-based practices. Konaté has worked with The Showroom and The Danish Film Institute to mention a few. Her writings have been published in Third Text, Phaidon, Paletten Art Journal, and more.

About The Showroom

The Showroom is a contemporary art space focused on collaborative and process-driven approaches to cultural production; be that art work, exhibitions, events, discussions, publications, knowledge and relationships, within its locality
 and beyond.

About Metroland Studio

A new site for research, experimentation and production, the new Metroland Studio residencies carry forward the core aims of Metroland Cultures to make new places for artists and art in Brent; and to build a legacy for the borough and its surrounding spaces, institutions and organisations.

28.01.2022 | by Alícia Gaspar | black cinema, black movies, cinema, culture, films, online events, online screening

Re-Writing the history of decolonisation with moving images - Call for Papers

Critical perspectives on documentary films and artistic practices from and about Lusophone Africa

Panel 3929, ASAUK 2014, University of Sussex, 09.-11.09.2014

Organizers: Robert Stock (GCSC, U Giessen/U Konstanz); Raquel Schefer (Paris 3);

Discussant: Ros Gray (Goldsmiths University of London)

Since the 1970s, there is a rich cinematographic production in Angola, Guinea Bissau and particularly Mozambique. These works have to be understood against the backdrop of the struggles for independence, the end of Portuguese colonial rule in 1974-75, subsequent political regimes and related conflicts. Actually, when considering documentary films and more recent pieces of video art, one notices a strong focus in engaging with colonial history and processes of decolonization that reach far beyond the formal transfer of power. Consequently, such films and artworks are part of a broader postcolonial framework in and through which questions of (national) identity and memory politics are addressed. The works of Ângela Ferreira, Filipa César and Nástio Mosquito and others demonstrate this in a convincing way. Though there have been recently some publications that address the analysis of such productions, there is still lack of case studies that discuss particular works in more detail and question the aesthetic as well as the ideological dimension of moving images and the performativity of visual representations. We are therefore interested in papers that scrutinise these aspects with regard to documentary and artistic practices from and about Lusophone African countries. The panel thereby aims to establish a revised and more complex history of audiovisual productions from and about the African Portuguese speaking countries and analytical perspectives about the ways they negotiate decolonisation.

We particularly encourage PhD candidates and early career researchers to participate in this panel. In order to submit your abstract (max. 250 words), please go to http://www.asauk.net/conferences/asauk14.shtml . The Call for papers will close in April 2014.

Please contact Raquel Schefer or Robert Stock to the following email address - rewritingpanel.asauk@gmail.com - for further information.

08.01.2014 | by martalanca | films