In Winter 2021 the Block Museum hosted a discussion between UK filmmaker Onyeka Igwe and Professor Bimbola Akinbola of the Department of Performance Studies at Northwestern University. The conversation was presented as part of the Block Cinema program The Loose Ends of Empire: Unforgetting Colonialism a screening of experimental film and audio-visual works from the […]
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This groundbreaking drama Majdhar (1984) was among the first to bring the inner lives and struggles of South Asian communities to popular audiences in the UK. On January 28, 2021 Block Cinema was proud to host a screening of the film followed by a discussion with Ahmed Alauddin Jamal, the co-founder of the legendary Retake […]
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For many, London is an imaginary landscape, a composite of images that circulate in art, literature, and popular culture. On November 12, 2020 Block Cinema explored this landscape with Unreal City: Film Essays on London by Ayo Akingbade and Reece Auguiste a program of experimental essay films from the UK. The screening was followed by a […]
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On November 5, 2020 Block Cinema welcomed California-based artist Fox Maxy (Ipai Kumeyaay and Payómkawichum) for a screening and conversation of his work. The works in the program, California Girls (2018), Maat Means Land (2020), and San Diego (2020), offered a prismatic and timely vision of the artist’s home state, viewed through the lens of […]
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In November 2018 the Block Museum of Art welcomed documentarian PJ Raval for a conversation on his award-winning feature documentary Call Her Ganda. The film following the 2014 murder of Jennifer Laude, a transgender Filipina woman killed by an American Marine, and the struggle for justice waged by her family, friends, lawyers, and investigative journalist […]
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In November 2019, The Block welcomed Toronto-based filmmaker Brett Story for two nights of her acclaimed documentary films and conversation on her groundbreaking practice. The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016) explores the criminal justice system and mass incarceration in the U.S. from a number of oblique vantage points, rather than focusing on prisons themselves. Story looks […]
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At age 30, Iranian filmmaker Mania Akbari was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy. A Moon For My Father (2019), an essay film made in collaboration with her partner, the British sculptor Douglas White, positions Akbari’s illness within layers of personal and national history. Rich in texture and astonishingly intimate, Akbari’s film […]
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Set in an alternate-reality socialist democratic United States, Lizzie Borden’s speculative fiction Born in Flames (1983) finds the country still plagued by social injustice. This feminist classic is a low-budget, grassroots production, documentary-like in its reflection of a long-gone grungy yet vibrant downtown New York City. Made at the height of the Reagan years, it […]
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Director Jessie Maple is a true trailblazer: the first African-American woman to join the International Photographers of Motion Picture & Television union, she also established a long-running venue for independent Black filmmakers in her own home. New York Women in Film and Television called Maple’s work “a forerunner of the independent, minority filmmaking that would cultivate directors […]
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On October 16, 2019, to inaugurate a year of programming around the One Book One Northwestern 2019-2020 selection, Hidden Figures: The Untold True Story of Four African-American Women who Helped Launch Our Nation Into Space, Block Cinema welcomed Chicago-based filmmaker (and Northwestern Film Studies PhD) Yvonne Welbon to present her 2003 documentary Sisters in Cinema. […]
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