Medea / I & I: An African Allegory / Child of Resistance

October 27, 2011 - 7:30 pm

In-person:

Ben Caldwell.

Medea (1973)

Directed by Ben Caldwell

Director Ben Caldwell’s Medea, a collage piece made on an animation stand and edited entirely in the camera, combines live action and rapidly edited still images of Africans and African Americans which function like flashes of history that the unborn child will inherit. Caldwell invokes Amiri Baraka’s poem “Part of the Doctrine” in this experimental meditation on art history, Black imagery, identity and heritage. —Allyson Nadia Field

Producer/Cinematographer/Editor: B. Caldwell. Screenwriter: B. Caldwell, Leroy Jones.

Digital video, transferred from 16mm, color, 7 min.

Preservation funded in part by a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation

I & I: An African Allegory (1979)

New print!

Directed by Ben Caldwell

Director Ben Caldwell designed I & I as a “résumé piece” to showcase his skills in experimental filmmaking, dramatic filmmaking and documentary. Drawing from Ayi Kwei Armah’s novel, Two Thousand Seasons, Caldwell meditates on reciprocity and on the concept of “I and I” which postulates no division between people, whereas the splitting of “you” from “I” is an invention of the devil designed to brew trouble in the world. —Allyson Nadia Field

Producer/Screenwriter/Cinematographer/Editor: B. Caldwell. Cast: Pamela B. Jones, Al Cowart, Marcia Bullock, Pearl Collins, Byron Simmons.

16mm, color, 32 min.

Child of Resistance (1972)

Directed by Haile Gerima

Inspired by a dream director Haile Gerima had after seeing Angela Davis handcuffed on television, Child of Resistance follows a woman (Barbara O. Jones) who has been imprisoned as a result of her fight for social justice. In a film that challenges linear norms of time and space, Gerima explores the woman’s dreams for liberation and fears for her people through a series of abstractly rendered fantasies. —Allyson Nadia Field

Producer/Screenwriter/Editor: H. Gerima. Cast: Barbara O. Jones, James Dougall.

16mm, b/w & color, 36 min.

Part of:

L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema—Exhibition

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