Los Angeles Filmforum at MOCA presents
The Familiar Unknown: Mysticism in the Present Future
Thursday, March 8, 2018, 7:00 pm
At MOCA Grand Ave Ahmanson Theatre, 250 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles
Filmmakers Amir George and dana washington in person! LA premieres!
Lauren Halsey: we still here, there, sees the Los Angeles-based artist continuing her practice of community-based myth-making by regularly changing an immersive space that will serve as a visionary archive reflecting the diversity of everyday Black cultural experiences in South Central L.A. Presented in conjunction with the exhibition, this program features experimental films and videos that engage with the mysterious, mystical, and absurd as a way to create possibility from within the constraints and restrictions of everyday life. These works by Amir George, Mike Henderson, and dana washington powerfully meditate on the power of culture in relation to the self and community. Through the use of archival footage, experimental narrative elements, and musically-infused rituals of transformation and transcendence, they collectively enunciate knowledge about the inner, sociopolitical aspirations of Black people and communities while utilizing unconventional approaches to history, collective memory, and the filmmaking process. Through an engagement with the mystical and mysterious, these films attempt to create possibility from within the constraints and restrictions of everyday life. Curated by Jheanelle Brown and Darol Kae.
INFO 213/621-1745 or education@moca.org and https://www.moca.org/program/filmforum-the-familiar-unknown-mysticism-in-the-present-future
TICKETS $15 general admission, $8 students with ID, available in advance at https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3085529
FREE for MOCA & Los Angeles Filmforum members; must present current membership card to claim free tickets.
Screening:
Optimum Continuum
By Amir George (2018, digital, color, sound, 9 min.)
Los Angeles premiere!
An on-going barrage of blackness always in progress. Abrupt patterns, part of and as a whole.
Down Hear
By Mike Henderson (1972, 16mm transferred to digital, B/W, sound, 12 min.)
Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
A powerful meditation on slavery and oppression set in a kitchen and featuring a slave- trading reenactment by Mike Henderson in white face, along with his brother Raymond, all paced by a slow and haunting blues track played by Mike. – Jeremy Rossen
Shades of Shadows
By Amir George (2015, digital, color, sound, 6 min.)
Los Angeles premiere!
Commissioned by Chicago Film Archives. Shades of Shadows is a collaboration with psychedelic soul band The O’Mys, that delves into spiritual mysticism and ritual sacrifice. Created with all archival footage, the characters in the film seek to manifest a better self.
Black Gold
By Amir George (2016, Super 8mm transferred to digital, color, sound, 2 min.)
Black Gold is an 8mm treasure hunt, a traditional song of black beauty.
The Encompassed Wisdom of the Inevitable Manifestation
By Amir George (2016, digital, color, sound, 2 min.)
Los Angeles premiere!
A spell casting of images guided by a voice in the night.
Decadent Asylum
By Amir George (2017, digital, color, sound – 17 minutes)
Los Angeles premiere!
Decadent Asylum is a folkloric narrative of a soul searching being told in three parts. The pupil become the practitioner, and the practitioner becomes the alchemist.
Black Chains
By Amir George (2017, 16mm transferred to digital, color, sound, 3 min.)
Los Angeles premiere!
Found footage music video for the rap artist Cornell Sanaa. Images convey perseverance
through poverty and misfortune.
Liberated Zones
By dana washington (2018, digital, color, sound, 6 min.)
Los Angeles premiere!
Liberated Zones is a two-part audio-visual mapping of which to address ways of handling pain, loss, or exclusion. Acting as a conceptual utopia that is part-manifesto and participatory activity, it attempts to provide practical methods for acknowledgement, processing, and healing.
Liberated Zones is comprised of narration by dana Washington, filmed footage by dana Washington and A Film By Black Daughters, as well as sourced digital materials by Outkast “Hold On, Be Strong,” Flying Lotus “Coronus, The Terminator,” Kahlil Joseph “mAAd city,” Weeksville Heritage Center, Frances Bodomo “Boneshaker,” Untitled bitmap image, Interwebsvideovault “Protest in Times Square,” Terence Nance “Jimi Could Have Fallen From The Sky,” and Nueinfo “Real Beating Heart.” Part two is “Heart Burn,” performed by artist and activist, Noni Limar, as a dedication to the labors of motherhood and the late Erica Garner, featuring actress Zula Azailee Star Hunter.
Amir George is a filmmaker and curator. Amir creates spiritual stories, juxtaposing sound and image with a non linear perception. He creates fragmented vignettes that conjure the secret life of objects both found and collected. The characters that inhabit his stories tend to dwell outside of social norms and exist in the space between and in the process of becoming. Amir’s short films has been screened at film festivals including Ann Arbor Film Festival, Trinidad and Tobago International Film Festival, BlackStar Film Festival, Afrikana Film Festival, and Chicago Underground Film Festival as well as cultural institutions, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, Anthology Film Archives, Glasgow School of Art, Museum of Contemporary Arts, Los Angeles, and Museum of Contemporary Arts Detroit. In addition to founding The Cinema Culture, a grassroots film programming organization, Amir is the co-founder of Black Radical Imagination a touring experimental short film series with Erin Christovale.
dana washington is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores existence, agency and the imagination. Through experimental film, portraiture, text, and narration, dana examines family history, fiction, and memory, as well as the condition of Black and queer persons, centering on oppression, representation, healing, and futurity. washington earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from California State University, Long Beach, and is continuing her practice and research as a Master of Fine Arts candidate at the University of California, San Diego.
Acknowledgements
Los Angeles Filmforum at MOCA furthers MOCA’s mission to question and adapt to the changing definitions of art and to care for the urgency of contemporary expression with bimonthly screenings of film and video organized and co-presented by Los Angeles Filmforum—the city’s longest-running organization dedicated to weekly screenings of experimental film, video, documentary, and animation.
Education Programs at MOCA, including Contemporary Art Start and Sunday Studio, and the MOCA Teen Program, are generously supported by The Hearst Foundations, Banc of California, MOCA Projects Council, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, The Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation, Edison International, Joseph Drown Foundation, The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation, Satterberg Foundation, Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, Michael Asher Foundation, The Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation, The Rhonda S. Zinner Foundation, The Winnick Family Foundation, and Pazia Bermudez-Silverman.
Los Angeles Filmforum is supported by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles. We also depend on our members, ticket buyers, and individual donors.
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