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.

SCREENS WITH:

Medea
(Ben Caldwell, USA, 1973, digiBETA, 7min)
Ben Caldwell’s first project at UCLA explores the cultural programming children inherit in the womb. Utilizing an experimental collage style, Caldwell layers historical drawings and photographs with the chanting of Amiri Baraka’s poem “Raise the Dead.” The result, as UCLA’s Rachel Wilson put it, is an “ephemeral memorial to Black cultural history.”

“Ben Caldwell’s Medea is visual poetry that emancipates the image. Those are Ben Caldwell’s words, not mine, as much as I would like to take credit for them.” –Dawn Spinella, Film Scholar, UCLA

I&I
New 16mm print!
(Ben Caldwell, USA, 1979, 16mm, 32min)
Choosing to watch I&I is to bare witness to reciprocity. Combining elements of experimental, documentary, dramatic film and portrait photography, director Ben Caldwell creates a lurid vision where moments of Africa and America’s shared history crash together.

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

Ujamii Uhuru Schule
(Don Amis, USA,  1974, digiBETA, 9min)
Ujamii Uhuru Schule gives an empowering glimpse of the Community Freedom School, an Afro-centric primary school in South Los Angeles. Faculty members’ testimony, African chants, songs, and drumming unify in an educational vision that applies the curriculum to black life. With fists raised in the air, the students embody the self determination, self respect and self defense they are taught.

Tonight’s program is part of our month-long series L.A. Rebellion. Read More >>

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