BAM Presents GARRETT BRADLEY'S AMERICA: A JOURNEY THROUGH RACE AND TIME

From Friday, October 11 through Thursday, October 17, BAM presents New Orleans-based artist Garrett Bradley's revelatory modern silent film America (2019), a poetic, visually sumptuous work that challenges the idea of Black cinema as a "wave," or "movement in time," proposing instead a continuous thread of achievement. "From the moment I saw this blazingly original, poignantly dreamlike short at this year's Sundance Film Festival," says series programmer Ashley Clark, "it felt imperative to offer our audiences the chance to luxuriate in this ambitious short-form work on the big screen." Each program throughout the series features the 30-minute short paired with films, talks, and special guest appearances.

The first evening of the series opens with a double bill of America and Lime Kiln Club Field Day (Hunter & Middleton, 1913), a rediscovered treasure starring Black vaudeville legend Bert Williams, considered to be the oldest surviving film with an all-Black cast, with an extended intro by Bradley and live accompaniment for Lime Kiln... by Jimmy Cobb (American percussionist, Kind of Blue) and Darrian Douglas. Other films and discussions programmed alongside America include: Four Women (1975) and Illusions (1982), two short works by Julie Dash, followed by the legendary director of Daughters of the Dust in conversation with Bradley; RaMell Ross' impressionistic, Oscar-nominated portrait of life in the heart of Alabama's Black Belt, Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018), with Ross and Bradley in conversation; and Stormy Weather (Stone, 1943), one of the few classic Hollywood features to star an all-Black cast, including music and dance icons Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, the Nicholas Brothers, and Fats Waller.

Other events include America and the Race Film, a program that includes Bradley's short, as well as Hellbound Train (Gist & Gist, 1930) and Yamekraw (Roth, 1930), two early African-American morality tales about sin and temptation amid the decadence of the Jazz Age, with an introduction by media conservationist Ina Archer; BAM and Black Portraiture[s]: Responding to Garrett Bradley's America, a screening of America and in-depth discussion with a selection of leading moving image scholars, in partnership with the NYU conference "Black Portraiture[s]: Memory and the Archive Past. Present. Future."; a program of Bradley's shorts, followed by a Q&A with the director; and a standalone screening of Garrett's languorously atmospheric first feature Below Dreams (2014), with an intro by Bradley.

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