Mounira Al Solh’s “Dinosaurs” pays tribute to John Cassavetes at Art in General
Art in General
79 Walker St. between Broadway & Lafayette St.
Friday, February 3, 7:00
212-219-0473
www.artingeneral.org
Pioneering improvisational writer-director John Cassavetes, who made such searing, emotional, cinema vérité films as Shadows, Faces, Husbands, and A Woman Under the Influence, died on February 3, 1989, at the age of fifty-nine. Art in General will honor the influential auteur at a special program on the twenty-third anniversary of his death, “What’s your take on Cassavetes?” being held in conjunction with Mounira Al Solh’s new exhibition, “Dinosaurs,” a film installation inspired by four of Cassavetes’ character-driven works, Faces, Husbands, Opening Night, and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. Al Solh will talk about and present clips from the four films, followed by a screening of the complete Faces, which stars Gena Rowlands, Seymour Casssel, John Marley, Fred Draper, and Val Avery and was added to the National Film Registry of the Library Congress last year. Also on view at Art in General right now are Katrin Sigurdardóttir’s “Stage” and Theresa Himmer’s “All State.”
From 1967 to 1975, a group of more than two dozen Swedish journalists came to America to document the civil rights movement. More than thirty years later, director and cinematographer Göran Hugo Olsson discovered hours and hours of unused 16mm footage — the material was turned into a program shown only once in Sweden and seen nowhere else — and developed it into The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, a remarkable visual and aural collage that focuses on the Black Panthers and the Black Power movement, a critical part of American history that has been swept under the rug. Olsson and Hanna Lejonqvist have seamlessly edited together startlingly intimate footage of such seminal figures as Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Stokely Carmichael, including a wonderfully personal scene in which Carmichael interviews his mother on her couch. But the star of the film is the controversial political activist Angela Davis, who allowed the journalists remarkable access, particularly in a jailhouse interview shot in color. (Most of the footage is in black and white.) Davis also adds contemporary audio commentary, sharing poignant insight about that tumultuous period, along with Abiodun Oyewole of the Last Poets, singer Erykah Badu, professor, poet, and playwright Sonia Sanchez, Roots drummer Ahmir Questlove Thompson (who also composed the film’s score with Om’Mas Keith), and rapper Talib Kweli, who discusses specific scenes in the film with a thoughtful grace and intelligence. The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is an extraordinary look back at a crucial moment in time that has long been misunderstood, if not completely forgotten. The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is screening on February 3 as part of the Bronx Museum of the Arts’ free First Fridays program honoring Black History Month and will be followed by a Q&A with coproducer Joslyn Barnes. There will also be performances by GIF, Latasha N. Nevada Diggs, Mahogany L. Browne, and M.C. K~Swift, and the galleries will remain open until 10:00, giving visitors plenty of time to check out the exhibition “Urban Archives: Emilio Sanchez in the Bronx” and the Acconci Studio long-term installation “Lobby-for-the-Time-Being.”
Experimental filmmaker Bill Morrison’s production company is called Hypnotic Pictures, and for good reason; the Chicago-born, New York-based auteur makes mesmerizing, visually arresting works using archival found footage and eclectic soundtracks that are a treat for the eyes and ears. In conjunction with the upcoming theatrical release of his 2011 film 
