Black Life: Newsletter Twenty Five
Circling the Archive with Dwayne LeBlanc and Tayler Montague in April, film recommendations plus a mixtape
Welcome back to Black Life! Spring has arrived and with it, our first film event of the year along with film recommendations we have for you at the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive including a 4K restoration of Cauleen Smith’s 1998 film Drylongso set in West Oakland. It’s a sweet time to find your way to the museum, sat in front of a screen or wandering around the galleries. Scroll on down for more details including Black Life’s own upcoming event…it’s really exciting one that’s been in the works since last fall and we hope you can join us in welcoming two sharp filmmakers and their works into the theater in just about a month ~
Black Life is honored to present Circling the Archive—an evening of short narrative films anchored by two award-winning, contemporary short films screening alongside canonized film works. On Saturday April 29 at 4pm, Dwayne LeBlanc’s Civic (2022) and Tayler Montague’s In Sudden Darkness (2020) screen alongside short films including a 35mm restoration of Charles Burnett’s short film Several Friends (1969) and music videos from the early aughts selected by Montague. LeBlanc and Montague will both be present in the theater for a post-screening discussion with Black Life co-curator ruth gebreyesus.
A native New Yorker, Tayler Montague forayed into filmmaking via her background in cultural criticism and film programming. Montague tells stories that place Black people front and center, building on the legacy of Black storytelling that she grew up with. Her debut film, In Sudden Darkness, is a portrait of a working-class Bronx family as they experience the Northeast blackout of 2003. Dwayne LeBlanc is a Los Angeles–based, first-generation Caribbean American artist and filmmaker. He is primarily self-taught, and his multimedia practice focuses on themes of migration, visibility, and dual identities. His debut short, Civic, is a meditative work about homecoming that was awarded a production grant from Ghetto Film School and Netflix. LeBlanc is currently in postproduction on two additional films that will form a trilogy with Civic.
~ more about the filmmakers ~
Dwayne LeBlanc is a Los Angeles based, first generation, Caribbean-American artist and filmmaker. Primarily self taught, his multimedia practice focuses on themes of migration, visibility and dual identities. His debut narrative short film, Civic, a meditative short film about homecoming, was awarded a production grant from Ghetto Film School and Netflix and was simultaneously developed at Berlinale Talents Short Form Station. Civic was awarded both the Jury Prize and Audience Award for Best Departures Mid-Length Short at the Indie Memphis Film Festival and a Special Jury Recognition at the New Orleans Film Festival. LeBlanc participated in Zurich Film Festival’s 2022 ZFF Academy as well as the Indie Memphis Film Festival Black Creators Forum. Civic will continue its journey at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) and Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival. LeBlanc is currently in post-production as well as development on two additional films that will form a trilogy with Civic.
Tayler Montague is a filmmaker, writer, curator, and native New Yorker. She forayed into the film industry through her background in cultural criticism and film programming. Montague seeks to tell stories that place Black people front and center, building upon the legacy of Black storytelling that she grew up with. Her debut film is In Sudden Darkness, a filmic portrait of a working class Bronx family as they experience the Northeast Blackout of 2003. Montague extends her gratitude to her familial and artistic community who helped bring the project to life. In Sudden Darkness received the Best Narrative Short award at the 2020 New Orleans Film Festival and a Special Jury mention at the Indie Memphis Film Festival. The film has played at festivals such as BlackStar Film Festival, TIFF, New York Film Festival, AFI Fest, and Nicho 54 (Nicho Novembro) as it continues to make its rounds. Montague was listed on Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2020. Through her work, Montague aims to honor Black figures, showcase Black love, and build community through shared viewing experiences.
As always, we reserve a set amount of free tickets that we joyfully offer to Black Life’s extended community of Black and brown filmmakers, artists, creators, and curious viewers. We encourage you to send a request for a ticket with your full name to blackblacklifelife@gmail.com by April 22nd.
Black Life Recommends, three films
Earth Mama
dir. Savanah Leaf
Friday, Apr 14, 2023
8 PM (97 mins)
BAMPFA
A single mother in Oakland navigates the foster care system while making a living at a family portrait studio in this intimate coming-of-age story. Based on lived experiences from SFFILM-supported writer-director Savanah Leaf, the film follows Gia (Tia Nomore), who warily sizes up her surroundings and would-be allies as she prepares for another child. In this drama made by a Bay Area crew, preconceptions of women with children in foster care are carefully examined and discarded, as Leaf presents a tender, textured, and surprisingly funny portrait of motherhood.
Tongues Untied
dir. Marlon Riggs
United States, 1989
Wednesday, May 3, 2023
7 PM (123 mins)
Tongues Untied is about the silence that envelops the lives of Black gay men. This exhilarating work is a loquacious attempt to break free of the homophobia and racism that mute the possibilities for human fulfillment. Marlon Riggs creates a poetic pastiche that has the emotional uplift of gospel music and the sobering impact of reportage. The words of gay poets, personal testimony, rap tableaux, dramatic sequences, and archival footage are woven together with a seductive palette of video effects. Riggs dared to speak the words that would conjure a life into being: “Black men loving Black men is the revolutionary act.”-Steve Seid
Drylongso
dir. Cauleen Smith
USA, 1998
Sunday, May 7, 2023
5 PM (86 mins)
Cauleen Smith’s feature debut “Drylongso, more than any other film I know, examines the physical space and toughened, often-ramshackle beauty of West Oakland. Smith thematizes the act of looking at the various spaces of Black Oakland through her protagonist Pica (Toby Smith), a photographer committed to the documentation of the most endangered urban species, the Black male, before his systematic elimination. Smith takes us from the upper-middle-class neighborhoods just off downtown to the run-down postindustrial zones of the port. In so doing, she generates inner-cityscapes whose rigorous depiction rivals the best of James Benning” (Michael Sicinski, Radical Light).-Steven Seid
Black Life note: this screening features the director, Cauleen Smith in person!
BLACK LIFE MIXTAPE #21 - What the Black Woman Thinks
I. What the Black Woman Thinks About Women’s Lib - Toni Morrison, 1971
I suppose at bottom we are all beautiful queens, but for the moment it is perhaps just as well to remain useful women. One wonders if Nefertiti could have lasted 10 minutes in welfare office, in a Mississippi gas station, at a Parent Association meeting or on the church congregation's Stewardess Board No. 2. And since black women have to endure, that romanticism seems a needless cal de sac, an opiate that appears to make life livable if not serene but eventually must separate us from reality. I maintain that black women are already O.K. O.K. with our short necks. O.K. with our callused hands. O.K. with our tired feet and paper bags on the Long Island Rail Road. O.K. O.K.
The piece excerpted from a full essay here.
II. C’est Si Bon - Eartha Kitt
III. Darling I Want My Gay Rights Now - Marsha P. Johnson
The video is not embeddable but can be found here.
Take care til next time ~