Seven Songs for Malcolm X
Event
This last chapter of the series explores the complex relationships between cinema's audiovisual practices and resources and the dynamics inherent in musical production and interpretation, in particular, of North American black music. It explores and shows strategies of artistic intermediary that import the advances of black culture in the areas of music, dance and oratory to the audiovisual territory. According to Arthur Jafa, the epithet of black artistic production (and black culture as a whole) occurs in musical manifestations (from jazz to hip-hop), where these are the dominant form. As such, the promotion of an aesthetic advance in specifically black cinema will only benefit from the identification and understanding of the variables that mark this singularity and popularity.
The films that make up the two screenings of this last part of the The Dark Matter of Black Cinema cycle cover the universe of music - particularly jazz - both at the thematic and at the formal level, through the involvement of musicians in the practice of cinema, as directors, technicians or actors. The first screening is dedicated to a director of the L.A. Rebellion movement that greatly influenced Jafa's relationship with cinema, Larry Clark, and what was considered “the only jazz film in the history of cinema”, Passing Through (preceded by the rebellious provocation of the musician-filmmaker Ed Bland). The second screening is held under the aegis of the claim, with the dreamlike editing by Dawn Suggs, the street photography (and denunciation) by Khalik Allah and the page to the father of the black revolution, Malcolm X, “the angriest man in America". This second part is, therefore, characterized by objects of an exploratory nature that seek to pave the way for the possibilities of cinema as an art of synthesis of a whole culture, experimenting with different approaches to the rhythm of editing, the cadence of capturing and projecting images and sounds and the frame rate (from the biggest frenzy to the still image).
The films that make up the two screenings of this last part of the The Dark Matter of Black Cinema cycle cover the universe of music - particularly jazz - both at the thematic and at the formal level, through the involvement of musicians in the practice of cinema, as directors, technicians or actors. The first screening is dedicated to a director of the L.A. Rebellion movement that greatly influenced Jafa's relationship with cinema, Larry Clark, and what was considered “the only jazz film in the history of cinema”, Passing Through (preceded by the rebellious provocation of the musician-filmmaker Ed Bland). The second screening is held under the aegis of the claim, with the dreamlike editing by Dawn Suggs, the street photography (and denunciation) by Khalik Allah and the page to the father of the black revolution, Malcolm X, “the angriest man in America". This second part is, therefore, characterized by objects of an exploratory nature that seek to pave the way for the possibilities of cinema as an art of synthesis of a whole culture, experimenting with different approaches to the rhythm of editing, the cadence of capturing and projecting images and sounds and the frame rate (from the biggest frenzy to the still image).
