William Kentridge
Black Diaspora Cinema
Choreo-graphies and archipelagic resonances
This film cycle curated by Beatriz Leal and jointly organised with the Film Archive of Catalonia offers a chronological route through some of the key films of the black diaspora. From silent films to today’s essay films, they will be shown in nine sessions at the CCCB or the Barcelona Film Archive.
For decades, black men and women of the diaspora have created a constellation of literary, musical, and audiovisual works whose sonic, affective, and historic connections cross through spaces and subjectivities. With their irreverence towards genres and artistic traditions, these creole films comprise an archipelago of constellations which, unearthing ghosts of repressed and forgotten histories, directly address us, ushering us into “a counterculture that defiantly reconstructs its own critical, intellectual, and moral genealogy in a partially hidden public sphere of its own” (Stuart Hall).
The films selected, covering almost a century and three continents, bring together, for the first time in this country, John Akomfrah, Kenneth Macpherson, Lionel Rogosin, Charles Burnett, Haile Gerima, Safi Faye, Med Hondo, Isaac Julien, Raoul Peck, Abderrahmane Sissako, and Jean-Marie Teno, authors who belong to an untamed, radical, black, international tradition marked by “the ontological and historical priority of resistance to power and objection to subjection” (Fred Moten). From silent films to the contemporary film essay, these poetic hybrid works break with expectations bound to origin and race by means of the use of archives and the artist’s involvement in the work, offering intimate and political letters in the form of manifestos in which they challenge the historic legacies of post-colonialism, slavery, and imperialism. Marked by the tri-continental wanderings of their authors and lead actors, they hold out answers to the crisis of capitalism and worldwide migratory movements in which “the whole world is becoming an archipelago” (Édouard Glissant).
27 January, CCCB
Opening session with live music
Borderline, Kenneth Macpherson (1930)
2 February, Filmoteca
Come Back, Africa, Lionel Rogosin (1959)
3 February, CCCB
Kaddu Beykat, Safi Faye (1975)
9 February, Filmoteca
Les Bicots-Nègres, vos voisins, Med Hondo (1974)
10 February, CCCB
Looking for Langston, Isaac Julien (1989)
Frantz Fanon: Black Skin White Mask, Isaac Julien (1996 )
16 February, Filmoteca
L’homme sur les quais, Raoul Peck (1993)
17 February, CCCB
Short film session
Hour Glass, Haile Gerima (1971)
The Horse, Charles Burnett (1973)
Hommage, Jean-Marie Teno (1985)
La tête dans les nuages, Jean-Marie Teno (1994)
23 February, Filmoteca
Heremakono, Abderrahmane Sissako (2002)
24 February, CCCB
The Stuart Hall Project, John Akomfrah (2013)
With the ticket of the sessions of this series you can access the exhibition "William Kentridge" of the CCCB for free.
This activity is part of William Kentridge
