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Africa Video Series

Spring 2012

Filmmaker Jean-Pierre Bekolo visits on the 20th anniversary of his first film Quartier Mozart.  Special screening - Monday, April 30 at 7 pm in Morey 321.
Workshop and lunch with the filmmaker on Tuesday, May 1.  Please RSVP for Tuesday events. 

 

Ethnography/Biography/Whimsy:
Three Contemporary African American Artists

Presented by Edward M. Puchner, FDI Predoctoral Fellow

Friday, March 9, 2012
3:00 pm
Morey 314
(new date/location)

“Purvis of Overtown”
(2006, dir. David Raccuglia and Shaun Conrad)

Working within Miami’s historic Overtown neighborhood, the artist Purvis Young (1943-2010) nurtured a painting career that was at once sacred and destructive, passionate and overwhelming, historic and ephemeral. Young began his artistic career in the 1960s, as the neighborhood of Overtown was torn apart by urban development and slid into decline around him. Advocating for its restoration, the artist created public murals, covering abandoned buildings with his expressionist paintings along an area known as “Goodbread Alley.” Fashioned from found boards and inspired by the mural movements of Chicago and Detroit, Young’s art quickly became synonymous with community activism. Eventually facing opposition from the city and the neighborhood, Young nevertheless became highly acclaimed, at once praised for his style by the art world and marginalized for his ‘self-taught’ identity within it.

 

Wednesday, February 1, 2012
5:00 pm
Gowen Room

“The Ethnography of No Place”
(2008, dir. Rachel Lears and Saya Woolfalk)

 “The Ethnography of No Place,” created by artist Saya Woolfalk and filmmaker Rachel Lears, presents an imaginary world, in which characters and stories suggest the travel narratives and rhetoric of anthropology. The video plays upon tropes of sexual, racial, and gender difference, utilizing humor, parody, and the surreal, to create a utopia called No Place and suggest the controversial connections between anthropology and art.

“Present Tense”
(2007, dir. Dave McKenzie)

A stop-time animation video, “Present Tense” by Dave McKenzie serves as a memory device for the artist. Through a series of symbolic and metaphorical vignettes, the video chronicles McKenzie’s emergence as an artist and explores his metamorphosis through time, playfully set within scenes of the everyday. It is both a portrayal and parody of the self, infused with references to the art world and stereotypes of black masculinity, and evokes the tenuous search for identity within a commodified and confrontational world.

Sponsored by the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African American Studies. For more information on the series, contact FDI Fellow Edward Puchner at (585) 275-3163
http://www.rochester.edu/College/AAS/

 

Fall 2011

“Trouble the Water”  (90min.) Thursday, December 8, 2011 6:00pm Hawkins-Carlson Room

"The Neoliberal Deluge" Panel Discussion Friday, December 9, 2011 10:00am  Location: Hawkins-Carlson, RRL

Synopsys: “Trouble the Water opens the day the filmmakers meet 24-year-old aspiring rap artist and ex-drug dealer Kimberly Rivers Roberts and her husband Scott at a Red Cross shelter in central Louisiana, then flashes back two weeks, with Kimberly turning her new video camera on herself and her neighbors trapped in their Ninth Ward attic as the storm rages, the levees fail and the flood waters rise.
Weaving 15 minutes of Roberts' ground zero footage shot the day before and the morning of the storm, with archival news segments, other home video, and verité footage they filmed over two years, director/producers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal document the journey of a young couple living on the margins who survive the storm and seize a chance for a new beginning.
Trouble the Water explores issues of race, class, and the relationship of government to its citizens, issues that continue to haunt America, years after the levees failed in New Orleans. http://www.troublethewaterfilm.com/content/pages/the_story/

Click here for detail of panel discussion here

Mariette Monpierre,
Guadeloupian Filmmaker

Presents

“Le Bonheur d’Elza”  (2011) 80min.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011
6:30pm
Hawkins-Carlson Room

Le Bonheur d'Elza is the first narrative film by a Guadeloupean female director!  The film is nominated for Best Picture at the 2011 Afro-Caribbean Arts Awards in France. Follwup discussion with Mariette Monpierre, November 3, click here...

FILM SYNOPSIS : A single mother in Paris, Bernadette tried hard to give her daughters everything.  She is thrilled when her eldest, Elza, the first college graduate in the family, completes her master's degree summa cum laude. But, Elza breaks her mother's heart by running away to their native Guadeloupe in search of a distant childhood memory:  the father she barely remembers.  This feature debut by writer/director Mariette Monpierre offers an unusual insider's view of lush island culture as she captures the passion and contradictions of this family.
http://gallery.me.com/mystone/100126

Constructing History/Discovering Community/Defining Self:
Three Contemporary African American Artists
presented by Edward M. Puchner, FDI Predoctoral Fellow

Wednesday, October 26, 2011
5:00 pm
Goergen 101

“Mr. Dial Has Something to Say”
(2007, dir. Celia Carey)

This documentary describes the artistic career of Thornton Dial, an artist known for paintings, sculptures and drawings that speak “between cultures, generations, social classes, and educational groups” and reflect social changes within his African American community of Bessemer, Alabama.

In “Mr. Dial Has Something to Say,” the artist, his friends, and others weigh in on the controversy around his art, centering on its marginalization as “folk, outsider, or self-taught” art. The film looks at Dial’s expressionistic paintings to ask vital questions about the cultural sources and creative community from which they draw and then examines their reception by the mainstream art world.

 

Wednesday, September 21, 2011
5:00 pm
Gamble Room, Rhees Library, 3rd Floor

“Constructing History: A Requiem to Mark the Moment”
(2008, dir. Carrie Mae Weems)

Carrie Mae Weems is an artist known for her sculptural installations, constructed with photography, film text and performance. Her varied work examines such issues as American cultural history, race and folklore.

In “Constructing History,” Weems re-enacted iconic photographs of deep cultural loss from the 1960’s in an effort to explore notions of violence, witness and memory in twentieth century American history and thought.

This film will be preceded by a short biography on the artist.
“Come Unto Me: The Face of Tyree Guyton”
(1998, dir. Nicole Cattell)

“Come Unto Me” tells the story of artist Tyree Guyton, an artist and community activist, who struggled to create art from the rubble of Detroit’s east side, even as he faced heated opposition from his own community and city council members who see his work only as junk.
http://www.heidelberg.org/

Sponsored by the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African American Studies. For more information on the series, contact FDI Fellow Edward Puchner at (585) 275-3163
http://www.rochester.edu/College/AAS/

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

For more information on the Africa Film Series, contact the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies: e-mail, fdi@mail.rochester.edu