Mobile Navigation
The Academy Museum presents Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. in the Ted Mann Theater on Wednesday, May 4 at 7:30 p.m. This DCP screening from a digitally restored original 16mm A/B negative was done in collaboration between Sundance Institute, the Academy Film Archive and the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
It was, as writer-director-producer Leslie Harris said, the “film Hollywood dared not do”: an unabashedly frank, challenging, and humorous story of a young Black woman growing into herself. Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. features Ariyan A. Johnson’s astonishing screen debut as Chantel, a Brooklyn teenager so filled with life and opinions she often breaks the fourth wall to directly address her audience. Chantel’s parents struggle financially and fight, as she, a star student, dreams of the day when she can leave for college. So, when she gets pregnant, she hides the fact until the baby’s birth.
Harris’ film, which turns 30 this year, is still radical in its depiction of sexuality and its refusal of the common Hollywood narratives of victimhood or tragedy in favor of a complex character who doesn’t just persevere but thrives.
In celebration of this landmark anniversary, the Academy Film Archive is pleased to premiere a restoration of Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. and Harris’ Never Forget, a documentary short on the role of the church in African American history.
Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.
U.S., 1992
Director: Leslie Harris. Screenwriter: Leslie Harris. With: Ariyan A. Johnson, Kevin Thigpen, Ebony Jerido.
DCP, color, 92 min. Digitally restored from the original 16mm A/B negatives, and a new DCP created in collaboration between Sundance Institute, the Academy Film Archive, and UCLA Film & Television Archive. Thanks to Miramax and Paramount for permission to screen the film.
Never Forget
U.S., 1998
Director: Leslie Harris.
DCP, color, 4 min.
Academy Museum film programming generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation.
