The realization of a black cinema is as central to American culture in the 21st century as was black music to the 20th century. What does this statement imply and what might it entail? What is black? What is cinema? What constitutes American culture in the 21st century? What was American culture in the 20th century and how did black music function in relation to it? Jafa explores the socio-economic context, emergence, and evolution of black cinema and music in the 20th and 21st centuries as culture, commerce, and ideological artifact.
Cinematic Migrations
Cinematic Migrations is a two-year collaborative research and production project initiated by Renée Green (Free Agent Media) and is co-hosted by the MIT Visiting Artists Program and ACT. The work of filmmaker John Akomfrah and producer Lina Gopaul (Smoking Dogs Films, and founding members of the seminal UK-based Black Audio Film Collective) is a focal point in our investigation of the theme.
Mar 04
7:00 PM
E15-001
The Stuart Hall Project (2012) is a film on the cultural theorist and sociologist Stuart Hall. Directed by John Akomfrah and produced by Lina Gopaul, the film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January of 2013. Through archival footage, television excerpts, family photographs, and music, Akomfrah’s portrayal of Hall’s life, work, and cultural impact explores issues of identity, cultural acceptance, immigration, and assimilation. In their lecture, the filmmakers will reflect on the film’s cultural and technological context.
Mar 11
7:00 PM
E15-001
José Renato, a thirty-five-year-old geologist, is sent on a surveying trip to the scrublands of the Sertão, a semi-arid isolated region in the northeast of Brazil. The goal of his survey is to assess possible routes for an irrigation canal from the region’s only large river. For many locals, the canal is a lifeline, the chance of a future and source of hope. But for those living in the canal’s path, it means only departure, and loss. Many of the places through which José Renato passes will be flooded and many of the people and families will be relocated.
Mar 18
7:00 PM
E15-001
How, amidst continual changes in society and media and the shifting relationship between psychology and film spectatorship, can we deal with notions of site, space, society, and subjectivity within cinema today? What narrative devices can be used to explore the interplay between these notions in the moving image? Åsdam examines these questions within the context of his new film and installation projects that include border narratives between Russia and Norway, life in the edgelands of Oslo, and the narration of the uncanny in a never-completed exposition center in Lebanon.
Apr 08
7:00 PM
E15-001
Nora M. Alter’s teaching and research focus on twentieth and twenty-first century cultural and visual studies from a comparative perspective, and she published the first English-language study of director Chris Marker in 2006. In her talk, Alter investigates Marker’s complex use of sound, paying particular attention to how music operates on multiple registers in order to expand the cinematic frame both temporally and spatially.
Apr 29
7:00 PM
E15-001
Simin Farkhondeh is an award winning filmmaker, artist, educator, and activist. From 1995 to 2003 she produced and directed the acclaimed monthly TV show Labor at the Crossroads. Her films have been screened at the Whitney Biennial, Margaret Mead Film Festival, and MoMA, as well as on PBS and BBC Channel Four. Farkhondeh’s personal work includes Caught Between Two Worlds (2007), a documentary about the Iranian Diaspora in the US, and Who Gives Kisses Freely From Her Lips (2009), a film that combines fact and fiction to discuss temporary marriage in Iran.