Starting Thursday, February 7, and continuing throughout the
month of February, George Eastman Museum and The Little Theatre will each be
hosting film series in honor of Black History Month. Spotlighting the unique
voices of black filmmakers from around the world, these series get to the heart
of what the movies do best, says Eastman Museum Curator of Film Exhibitions
Jared Case. “The empathetic nature of cinema — the ability for the audience
member to put themselves in the situation of the characters on the screen — is
only helped by a diversity of voices,” he says. “There’s seven billion
different ways of seeing the world, and whether it’s male or female, American
or foreign, the more we see from other people in our own country or around the
world, the more empathetic we become to other’s experiences.”
First, the
Eastman Museum and The Little will partner for a
screening of the 1991 feature “Daughters of the Dust” sponsored by the Rochester Association of Black Journalists. Set in 1902, the
film is a lush and lyrical look at the Gullah community, a population descended
from Central and West African enslaved people that existed for generations,
isolated from the mainland of Georgia and South Carolina. The plot finds a
family coming together to celebrate their ancestors before some of them leave
their home for the mainland. With this film, Julie Dash became the first
African-American woman to direct a feature that received a general theatrical
release in the United States. More recently, the film served as a major
influence for Beyoncé’s 2016 visual album “Lemonade.” A panel discussion will
follow the screening. (Thursday, February 7, 7:30
p.m.)
Each
Thursday evening, the Dryden Theatre’s Black Female Filmmakers series will
continue to screen films from pioneering filmmakers whose work has helped
inspire the current crop of black female directors making waves in Hollywood,
including Dee Rees, Ava DuVernay, Gina Prince-Bythewood, and Angela Robinson.
Directed by Euzhan Palcy, “A Dry White Season” was in 1989 somehow only the first
feature film produced by a major Hollywood studio (MGM) to be directed by a
black woman. The film concerns a white middle-class teacher in South Africa
whose comfortable life is upended when he asks questions about a young black
boy who died in police custody, exposing him to the realities of the brutal apartheid
regime. Returning from a nine-year acting hiatus, Marlon Brando earned what
would be his final Oscar nomination for the film. (Thursday,
February 14, 7:30 p.m.)
Cheryl Dunye’s clever indie romantic-comedy “The Watermelon Woman” stars Dunye
herself as a young woman who works as a video store clerk while pursuing her
passion project: making a movie about a forgotten silent film actress of the
1930s, credited on screen only as The Watermelon Woman. A landmark of LGBTQ
cinema, this was the first feature film directed by an out black lesbian. (Thursday, February 21, 7:30 p.m.)
Before you
check out her Harriet Tubman biopic due out late this year, make time for
actress-turned-director Kasi Lemmons’ atmospheric
Southern Gothic “Eve’s Bayou,” a haunting
coming-of-age story following the dangerous chain of events that unfold after a
young girl witnesses her beloved father (Samuel L. Jackson) having an affair.
This was Roger Ebert’s pick as the best film of 1997. (Thursday, February 28, 7:30 p.m.)
The Little
Theatre’s series continues with the inspiring documentary “Don’t Be Nice,” which follows New York City’s Bowery Slam
Poetry Team as they compete for the National Slam Poetry Championship in
Atlanta during the summer of 2016. (Friday,
February 15, 6:30 p.m., Little 1)
On October
22, 1963, more than 250,000 students boycotted the Chicago Public Schools to
protest racial segregation. Civil Rights documentary short “’63 Boycott” acts as an oral history of the event,
combining archival footage of the demonstration with current-day interviews
with participants (all shot by director Gordon Quinn, who attended the protest
as a 21-year-old). (Wednesday, February 27, 6:30 p.m., Little 5)
This article appears in Jan 30 – Feb 5, 2019.
