Everything is the same except the climate.
We return to you here at Black Life after a dormant winter with some events and a promise that we’ll bloom some winter thoughts in Spring. Amidst seemingly new tragedies, it seems things calibrate back to old hierarchies. To find meaning in any of it, it helps to remember the past, it helps to dream up a future and hold close the truth of our present moment.
“[T]hat’s where truth lies. In our myths, in our songs, that’s where the seeds are. It’s not possible to constantly hold on the crisis. You have to have the love and you have to have the magic. That’s also life. And I regard it, even though it may sound like I’m dealing in fantasy, I don’t think so. I find it all terribly realistic because I regard my responsibilities as a Black writer as someone who must bear witness. Someone who must record the way it used to be. The way it ought to be I leave to the sociologists.”
From an interview with Toni Morrison in 1977.
RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE HEART
a still from Cissé’s 1978 film, Baara
We’re very pleased to recommend fours films by the great Souleymane Cissé which screen at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive beginning March 31 until April 17, 2022.
In March 2020, BAMPFA was honored to host one of the giants of African cinema, Malian filmmaker Souleymane Cissé, with his film Brightness, at our last screening before the COVID-19 lockdown. We are pleased to once again present this landmark of cinema, as well as a new restoration of Cissé’s The Young Girl, The Wind, and Baara.
Born in Bamako in 1940, Cissé began his career as a film projectionist, later studying at the VGIK film school in Moscow before returning to Mali to work on newsreels for the country’s Ministry of Information. His searing 1975 feature debut, The Young Girl, was the first full-length film shot in his native language of Bambara; a fearless depiction of rape and powerlessness, it was banned by the authorities, and Cissé was jailed. His later works Baara and The Wind offer similarly heady social and political critique, delivered with visual panache and in narratives that weave Marxist thought with more ancient, traditional themes.
Cissé noted that his most acclaimed work, Brightness, was “in part made in opposition to European ethnographic films.” He believes that “every nation has the right to be represented by the cinema.” Proudly African, Cissé aims his films toward Malians first, so that they can understand the grace of their countrymen in the face of the reality—and the corruption—they encounter daily. “Damu is the Bambara term for the positive impression that is left by the sight of a person or a thing,” he wrote. “Damu is perhaps what grace is. When you see man living, you observe all that he is, all that surrounds him . . . you have to depict him with damu.”
—Jason Sanders, Film Notes Writer
This series is organized by Film Curator Kathy Geritz. Cosponsored by the Center for African Studies.
See you at the theater next month for this lovely presentation of an African film giant and lookout for more from Black Life on his work.
BLACK LIFE MIXTAPE #13 Smoke, Stress, and Some Good Richard
1. Ky Ani - Smoke ft. Connie Diiamond
“If you’re not the typical cis-hetero hood dude or the typical female rapper narrative although there has been progress lately, they’re not allowing anyone in the game that doesn’t fit that description. Recently gay men and women have been making their presence mainstream into the Rap and R&B field and making their statement. We have yet to have a Trans individual breakthrough into the industry and I’m trying to be that figure to put us girls on the map!” — Ky Ani
2. Bam Bam - Stress
"Toying with off-kilter timings and slow, sludgy rhythms nearly ten years before the Seattle sound hit the mainstream, Bam Bam not only provided reference material for the movement, they were the first Seattle band to lay down tracks at Reciprocal Recording– the location of Nirvana’s famous demo session for songs featured on Bleach and Incesticide. C/Z Records, a label established by recordings from the studio, courted the band while they demoed their songs with Chris Hanzsek and Tina Casale.”— TINA BELL’S HIDDEN LEGACY: THE BLACK WOMAN WHO CREATED THE SOUND OF GRUNGE
3. Good Dick (Original Mix)
“I was raised on Soul Music & Black Radio in the 70s and 80s. Two of my cousins were my super cool heroes because they could breakdance and listened to all the best electro, hip hop, and urban dance music, so they were super influential. But living in the Bay Area in the late 80s and early 90s. I was also exposed to so many other types of music, such as house music before we knew it was called house and even early hardcore techno. From 92 until 95, I used to stay up late on Fridays and Saturday nights to listen to The Aftershock, which was a mix show that played underground house, acid jazz, and hardcore techno. I was also deeply into Cocteau Twins, 4AD, and death rock as there was an influential goth scene I had access to in Downtown San Jose as well.”— Lady Blacktronika