BLACK RADICAL IMAGINATION Begins This Sunday

An evening of film screenings organized by Black Radical Imagination followed by a conversation and Q & A with curator Amir George and filmmaker Jamilah Sabur (presented in by ArtCenter/South Florida).

Admission is free with Eventbrite RSVP: eventbrite.com/e/film-screenings-and-qa-with-curators-amir-george-and-eric-christovale-tickets-28864975920. Seating availability at the Miami Beach Cinematheque will be first come first served. SUNDAY, NOV. 6 AT 8:00 P.M.

Black Radical Imagination is an international touring program of experimental short films emphasizing new stories from within the African diaspora - curated by Erin Christovale and Amir George - that delves into the worlds of new media, video art and experimental narrative.

The Miami portion of this tour, presented by ArtCenter/South Florida at the Miami Beach Cinematheque, will feature three short films: The Golden Chain (by Ezra Claytan Daniels and Adebukola Bodunrin); Field Notes (by Vashti Harrison); and Medical gaze (by Jamilah Sabur).

Following the film screenings, a Q & A conversation will be presented featuring curator Amir George and filmmaker Jamilah Sabur.

Black Radical Imagination focuses on new stories within the African Diaspora, each artist contributes his or her own vision of postmodern society through the state of current Black culture. The touring fiom series also focuses on the aesthetics of Afro-futurism, Afro-surrealism, and the magnificent through the context of cinema.
The notion of the Black Radical Imagination stemmed from a series of discussions around the boundaries and limitations that are historically given to people of color in the realm of the cinematic.

The series builds on futurist, surrealist, and magical realist artistic movements to interrogate identity in the context of cinema.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Amir George is a motion picture artist and film programmer born and bred in Chicago. Amir creates work for the cinema, installation, and live performance. His motion picture work and curated programs have been screened in festivals and galleries nationally and internationally. Amir is the founder of Cinema Culture, a grassroots film programming organization. He is currently manifesting his latest short film Decadent Asylum.

Jamilah Sabur is an artist working across various disciplines including performance, video, and installation. Sabur was born in Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica and received her MFA in Visual Arts from University of California San Diego in 2014 and her BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in Interdisciplinary Sculpture in 2009. She is interested in embodied cognition, social mimicry, dissonance, ritual, and the uncanny. Sabur lives and works in Miami, Florida.

THE THREE FILMS:

This three films (The Golden Chain, Field Notes, and Medical gaze) were curated specifically for the exhibition titled An Image, which is the current exhibition on view at ArtCenter/South Florida. This selection of three films explores concepts of existence through themes of post humanism, migration, and mythology to continue the conversation towards shifting the way in which Black Identity is defined on screen and how these stories affect our ever-changing global culture.

Film #1: The Golden Chain, 2015 (13 min)
Directed by Ezra Claytan Daniels and Adebukola Bodunrin
(View the trailer video for The Golden Chain at vimeo.com/181331432)
In the distant future, a Nigerian space station in a remote corner of the galaxy orbits an artificial pinpoint of matter so dense that it cannot exist in our solar system.

It is a recreation of the birth of the universe itself and overseen by Yetunde, the sole crew member on the space station Eko.

Ezra Claytan Daniels is a writer and illustrator based in Los Angeles, CA. His critically acclaimed graphic novel series, The Changers, began a unique career peppered with a number of collaborative multimedia projects ranging from video games to animation to feature documentaries.

Adebukola Bodunrin is a film, video, and installation artist who explores language, culture, and media. In her collage animations, she manipulates film using unorthodox manual and digital techniques in order to produce unexpected cinematic experiences. Bodunrin completed her Master of Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been screened or exhibited nationally and internationally at venues that include the Jersey City Museum of Art, the Scope Art Fair, Onion City Film Festival, the Chicago Underground Film Festival, Nightingale, Chicago, Festival Animator, Pozna?, Poland, Ok, Quoi? festival, Sackville, New Brunswick, Anthology Film Archives, New York, and the Black Cinema House, Chicago.

Budunrin has participated in studio residences at the Chicago Artists Coalition as a participant of theBOLT residency, and at the Chicago Cultural Center. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

Film #2: Field Notes, 2013 (17 min)
Directed by Vashti Harrison
(View the trailer video at: vimeo.com/160958003)

Field Notes is a visual and aural field guide to paranormal activities on the island nation of Trinidad told through the voices of one family.

Vashti Harrison is an artist and filmmaker whose work focuses on the natural and the supernatural. Folklore, fables and fairy tales tend to weave their way into everything she makes. Working in multiple formats and mediums she uses the form and aesthetics of classic tales to retell stories from her own life and investigate her Caribbean Heritage.

Film #3: Medical gaze, 2013 (13 min 43 sec)
Directed by Jamilah Sabur
Medical gaze is a piece about a part of Jamaican identity that is so ingrained in the cultural identity on an almost pathological level; the fear of lizards, especially the croaking lizard, a lizard from the Gecko family.

A figure finds themself in a space where they are afraid to check their mail, because they're afraid to see the lizards in the mail box. It becomes a whimsical portrait of a single consciousness engaged in a non-linear, self-reflective act of overcoming fear. Thinking about the subconscious residue of sound and voice, getting inside this residue; Sabur composed a soundtrack with the key of creating subconscious voice. This work includes moments of speech, singing and a chant-like recitation of the verses from a popular 1976 Jamaican reggae song by Max Romero and Lee "Scratch" Perry called "Chase The Devil," (another version of the song was redone by The Upsetters and Prince Jazzbo called "Croaking Lizard").

Jamilah Sabur was born in Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica. She received her MFA in Visual Arts from University of California San Diego in 2014 and her BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in Interdisciplinary Sculpture in 2009. She is interested in embodied cognition, social mimicry, dissonance, ritual, and the uncanny. She has recently exhibited and performed at Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA; Herron School of Art Gallery, Indianapolis, IN; Dimensions Variable, Spinello Projects, Miami, FL. Sabur lives and works in Miami.

ABOUT ARTCENTER/SOUTH FLORIDA
ArtCenter/South Florida was founded by Ellie Schneiderman in the spring of 1984 on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach as an organization to address the community's cultural needs. Today, ArtCenter is credited as being the catalyst for the revitalization of Lincoln Road and its surrounding areas, having provided studio residencies and exhibition opportunities to more than 1,000 visual artists, while also offering art classes and outreach programs to the community. ArtCenter/South Florida prides itself in being one of the few institutions in South Florida that grants free admission to all of its exhibitions and other public programming in an effort to make the Arts Accessible to all.

Exhibitions and programs at ArtCenter/South Florida are made possible with the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; the Miami Beach Mayor and City Commissioners; and the State of Florida, Florida Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Arts Council; the National Endowment for the Arts; and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. For more information, visit artcentersf.org, 924 Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, or call 305/674-8278.

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