Black Life: Newsletter Twenty
goings on about town: Sasha Kelley, Badou Boy, Do The Right Things
Welcome back to Black Life! We hope you’ve been tuned into Sasha Kelley’s social takeover on the BAMPFA ig account. Please do find her posts here, and here and tune in for more. Kelley will be leading a presentation of film and print work on Saturday August 27th from 12pm until 4pm at the museum’s Reading Room. We’re excited for this first return to the museum for a Black Life presentation since 2020. Do save the date & join us.
Some weeks ago in early July, I (ruth gebreyesus) introduced Charles Burnett’s sublime Killer of Sheep in the theater at the museum. Here’s the text from that introduction for those who’re curious or want to revisit those sentiments.
In early 1970s Watts when Killer of Sheep was filmed, same as today in Watts and today in Oakland and in Berkeley and every where else in this country, America makes naïve out of Black people who expect one foot to walk on the same solid ground that the last foot stepped on. Jobs make naïve out of people who labor their mind & bodies and hope for rest. Parents make naïve out of children’s ambitions, their expectation of safety. We make naïve out lovers who attempt honest love.
Black Life Recommends: Badou Boy
Djibril Diop Mambéty
Senegal, 1970
Digital RestorationSunday, August 7, 2022 5:00 PM
Mambéty’s short works foretold the exuberant creativity of his subsequent feature Touki Bouki (1973). Transferring his experience in experimental theater to cinematic innovation, in Badou Boy, Mambéty presents little stories on the screen, interweaving them with others on the soundtrack. The film revolves around a punk kid in Dakar, Senegal’s capital. The humor and conniving characters sometimes employ slapstick, with the filmmaker doubling as an actor in one Chaplin-esque scene. No chance is missed to mock authority.
Free Outdoor Screening: Do the Right Thing
Spike Lee
United States, 1989Thursday, Aug 25, 2022 7 PM
Outdoor Screen“Do the Right Thing is bright and brazen, and it moves with a distinctive jangling glide,” J. Hoberman wrote for the Village Voice. “Set on a single block in the heart of Brooklyn on the hottest Saturday of the summer, it offers the funniest, most stylized, most visceral New York street scene this side of Scorseseland.” In its portrayal of simmering racial tensions escalating toward tragedy, the film is, in Hoberman’s words, “a daring mix of naturalism and allegory, agitprop and psychodrama.” Lee recalled: “Rosie Perez dancing. People were not ready for the opening of that film. That opening is a part of cinematic history.”
BLACK LIFE MIXTAPE #17 - Feelin Good
until next time, take good care ~
Ryanaustin + ruth