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L.A. Rebellion
L.A. Rebellion
MARCH 1–24, 2013 WEEKENDS (FRIDAYS–SUNDAYS)
Major support provided by Humanities Washington
Join us in March 2013 for four weekends of powerful film experiences, shared stories and in-depth conversation about race, cinema and history during L.A. Rebellion.
At a unique time and place in American history, a critical mass of filmmakers of African descent came to the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television to make movies and produced a rich, innovative, sustained, and intellectually rigorous body of work. Occasionally called the “Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers,” this group of mostly unheralded artists created a unique cinematic landscape, over the course of two decades in the 1960s and 70s, as university students worked, mentored one another and passed the torch. The group's significance is far-reaching, with their emergence set in the aftermath of the Watts Uprising and against the backdrop of the continuing Civil Rights Movement and the escalating Vietnam War.
They came from Watts. They came from New York City. They came from throughout America or crossed an ocean from Africa. The filmmakers of the L.A. Rebellion achieved excellence while realizing a new possibility for “Black” cinema, one that explored and related to the real lives of Black communities in the U.S. and worldwide.
Special thanks to our Humanities Advisors Tamara Cooper and Ralina Joseph. Presented in association with UCLA Film & Television Archive and supported in part by grants from the Getty Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The series is curated by Allyson Nadia Field, Jan-Christopher Horak, Shannon Kelley and Jacqueline Stewart.
- Get an L.A. Rebellion series pass and see the full month of movies at a major discount: $55 General / $35 Film Forum Members.
- You can also buy a pass for each weekend of the series à la carte: $15 General / $10 Film Forum Members.
Weekend One (March 1 -3) / Weekend Two (March 8 - 10) / Weekend Three (March 15 - 17) / Weekend Four (March 22 - 24)
"The LA Rebellion was a small number of black American filmmakers (many are now professors) who attended film school at UCLA and made films that were often experimental, often realistic, often beautiful, and often challenging. The main directors of this movement were Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, Haile Gerima, Larry Clark, and Billy Woodberry—and its most famous films are Killer of Sheep, Bush Mama, and Daughters of the Dust. Though these film are political and do address black American poverty and other social issues, they never explode into the masculine black rage of Spike Lee's cinema or lose sight of the deeper, far more complicated and human side of the black experience. . .Like jazz in the modern moment, or mid-20th-century black American novels, the LA Rebellion is above all an intellectual movement." —The Stranger
"A priceless cinematic time capsule of the African-American experience...Suffice it to say, this is easily the cinematic centerpiece of the sprawlingly momentous Pacific Standard Time project. It is as if some giant gap in our history has suddenly been filled in for us. It's only been a 30-year wait: Seize the chance." -LA Weekly
Daughters of the Dust
New 35mm print!
Mar 01
(Julie Dash, United States, 1991, 35mm, 127 min)
A heroic hallmark of independent filmmaking, Daughters of the Dust tells a visually fantastic story about a world that, for many of us, barely exists: the Gullah community, descendents of slaves, living in southern Georgia at the turn of the century. Daughters of the Dust uses surreal imagery as a backdrop for exposing the conflicts—modernity versus spirituality, tradition versus sexuality—that tore at an isolated community tossed in the tides of American history.
L.A. Rebellion Cinema Salon: Weekend One
Free event!
Mar 02
Join us for a conversation about the evolution of a black feminist perspective in cinema and the intersections of art, gender and civil rights, as well as how far black women's filmmaking has come in the last 20 years. Panelists include Zola Mumford of the Langston Hughes African American Film Festival, Christina Lopez of the Radical Women collective, Isis Asare of Sistah Sinema and moderated by Seattle University Professor Gary Perry, Affiliated Faculty with the Women's Studies and Global African Studies Programs.
Bush Mama
New 16mm print!
Mar 02
(Haile Gerima, United States, 1979, 16mm, 105 min)
It’s rare that a film brazenly combines realist politicking and fictional narrative, but in 1975 Los Angeles, Haile Gerima didn’t have time to flinch. In Bush Mama, whose very title pits the image of the tribal family against the American city, Gerima builds a heroine around the skeleton of his own observations: Dorothy, a single mother mistreated by the welfare system and harassed by the law. Dorothy’s resistance to cynical submissiveness appears on screen alongside the director and film crew as they fight for the right to tell Dorothy’s story on film.
A Different Image + Selected Short Films
Mar 03
(Allie Sharon Larkin, United States, 1982, 16mm, 112 min)
Anyone who’s ever prayed for a film to drive a wedge in outdated Hollywood portrayals of women—and particularly of African-American women in a white-dominated society—will be as liberated by A Different Image, as the film’s protagonist Alana builds a self-image that defies men’s ideas of pursuit. Striking at cultural barriers to women’s expression through an uplifting portrait of a lady, A Different Image quietly raises the specter of any individual’s ability to bust out of cultural expectations.
My Brother’s Wedding
Director's Cut! Director in Attendance!
Mar 08
(Charles Burnett, USA, 1983/2007, digiBETA, 82 min)
In Charles Burnett’s follow up to Killer of Sheep (1977), Pierce, a laid off factory worker, returns to work for his family’s dry cleaning business. In Burnett’s renowned, unadorned narrative style and richly detailed settings, we see Pierce pulled between the two worlds of his brother’s upper-middle-class fiancé and an old friend who was recently released from prison. Through Pierce’s choices, My Brother’s Wedding speaks beyond personal conflict to a community that was itself at a crossroads.
L.A. Rebellion Cinema Salon: Weekend Two
Free event!
Mar 09
In the mid-1970s, a loose-knit group of black graduate students at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) produced a body of films designed to challenge Hollywood cinema thematically and stylistically. Chief among these student filmmakers was director Charles Burnett. Join University of Washington Professor Clarence Spigner and pioneering filmmaker Charles Burnett as they discuss the history and personalities of the L.A. Rebellion film movement.
Bless Their Hearts
New 35mm print! Cinematographer Charles Burnett in attendance!
Mar 09
(Billy Woodberry, USA, 1984, 35mm, 84min)
The last neorealist film to emerge from the L.A. Rebellion, Bless Their Hearts portrays the effects of underemployment on both a single family and the whole community. Originally written by Charles Burnett, who had first encouraged Woodberry to make a feature film and had introduced him to the cast of Killer of Sheep, the material was subsequently developed by Woodberry. Bless Their Hearts is a beautiful collaboration, exemplary of the mentorship that enabled UCLA’s Ethno-Communications program to flourish.
As Above So Below
New 16mm print!
Mar 10
(Larry Clark, USA, 1973, 16mm, 52 min)
After helping the U.S. suppress social uprisings in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic, Jita-Hadi returns home a veteran with a heightened political conscience. Paralleling Hadi’s cynicism, the character Pee Wee’s blind faith in the system brings his life to a tragic end. Larry Clark’s As Above So Below takes a strong stand against hope as a means of combating corruption, and serves not only as a powerful story, but a call to arms.
Passing Through
New 35mm print!
Mar 15
(Larry Clark, USA, 1977, 35mm, 111 min)
Larry Clark's poignant film follows an African American saxophonist, recently released from prison, who struggles to preserve his artistic integrity as he awakens to racial consciousness via encounters with the elderly "Poppa" (played by veteran actor Muse). The film's score, arranged by Horace Tapscott, features music by Eric Dolphy, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Sun Ra, along with a live performance by the Pan African People's Arkestra.
L.A. Rebellion Cinema Salon: Weekend Three
Free event!
Mar 16
Many people's knowledge of black filmmaking in the 1970s is limited to "blaxploitation" films, but the films of the L.A. Rebellion tell an extraordinary history of black cinema and offer insight into the legacies of Black communities. Join local filmmakers Shaun Scott, Charles Mudede and Brian McDonald as they discuss radical black filmmaking today and the legacy of the L.A. Rebellion. Conversation will be moderated by Carmel Curtis.
Your Children Come Back to You
New 16mm print!
Mar 16
(Alile Sharon Larkin. USA, 1979, 16mm, 30 min)
A single mother lives welfare check to welfare check, struggling to provide for her daughter. Larkin’s film masterfully presents a child’s perspective on wealth and social inequality. Screens with three powerful short films by Gay Abel-Bey, S. Torriano Berry and Jacqueline Frazier.
Emma Mae
New 35mm print!
Mar 17
(Jamaa Fanaka, USA, 1976, 35mm, 100 min)
In Jamaa Fanaka‘s second feature, Emma Mae arrives in Los Angeles from Mississippi replete with rough edges and an exceptional ability to kick ass. Emma Mae’s plain looks and shy demeanor set her apart from super mama heroines of this “Blaxploitation” era (e.g. Foxy Brown, Cleopatra Jones). But when folks underestimate her, Emma Mae surprises everyone (including her no-good boyfriend Jesse) with her extraordinary physical and emotional strength.
Compensation
Mar 22
(Zeinabu Irene Davis, United States, 1999, digiBETA, 118 min)
To fit the parallel romances that it recounts—between a deaf woman and a hearing man in Chicago’s African American communities—Compensation shows us the world as its deaf protagonists experienced it, minimizing spoken dialogue, employing title cards and lingering on rich, contemplative images. The film’s aesthetic not only makes it enjoyable for deaf and hearing audiences alike, but makes the stories feel like dreams: good dreams, though fraught with the characters’ struggles with racism, disability and the presence of death.
L.A. Rebellion Cinema Salon: Weekend Four
Free event!
Mar 23
The L.A. Rebellion film movement unfolded against the backdrop of the recent Watts Uprising, the profound sociocultural re-assessments it provoked and amidst growing dissension among black political groups, from the Panthers to Ron Karenga's US movement. Join author Pat Thomas (Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975), Ron Johnson (member of the Seattle Black Panther Party) and Seattle University professor Gary Perry, as they discuss the legacy of Watts, the L.A. Rebellion and social justice, reviving a cultural, social, artistic and political framework now lost to memory. This event is held at The Project Room on Capitol Hill.
Black Art, Black Artists: Short Films
Mar 23
We begin an evening of five unique films with Elyseo J. Taylor's Black Art, Black Artists. Created by the founder of the Media Urban Crisis Committee (MUCC), precursor to the Ethno-Communications program, Black Art, Black Artists takes the viewer on a sweeping museum tour. Tracing African American artists throughout history, the greater discussion of what aesthetic principals define black art emerges. Questions surrounding the role of audience and the responsibility of social commentary draw attention to the artistic decisions made by all of the filmmakers in series.
Child of Resistance + Selected Short Films
Mar 24
(Haile Gerima, United States, 1972, 16mm, 83 min)
Barbara O. Jones, whose legend would be formed with her role in Bush Mama, brings to life Haile Gerima’s charged daydream of a woman activist in chains. Seething with the political current of the early 1970s,Child of Resistance provides great company for a second mid-length film screening tonight—Brick by Brick, which documents black residents of Washington, D.C. coming together to avoid being bought out of their homes.