Events Calendar

This fall, the Out of the Archive screening and discussion series continues at FilmScene! This year’s theme is “Envisioning Blackness,” and the series will showcase the vibrant, multifaceted tradition of Black cinema by presenting rarely screened and/or recently restored films. Tickets are pay-what-you-can (with students, in particular, encouraged to pick $0).

The opening film for the 2023-24 series is Cauleen Smith’s debut feature film Drylongso (1988, 86 mins). A lost treasure of 1990s DIY filmmaking, Drylongso embeds an incisive look at racial injustice within a lovingly handmade buddy movie/murder mystery/ romance. Alarmed by the rate at which the young Black men around her are dying—indeed, "becoming extinct," as she sees it—brash Oakland art student Pica (Toby Smith) attempts to preserve their existence in Polaroid snapshots, along the way forging a friendship with a woman in an abusive relationship (April Barnett), experiencing love and loss, and being drawn into the search for a serial killer who is terrorizing the city. Capturing the vibrant community spirit of Oakland in the nineties, Smith crafts both a rare cinematic celebration of Black female creativity and a moving elegy for a generation of lost African American men.

Reserve your tickets today at https://icfilmscene.org/. All attendees will receive a ticket for a FREE drink at FilmScene, and there will also be a dessert reception after the show. Catering will be provided by Bread Garden Market. Come watch a great film and stay after to talk about it with a cookie in hand! 

Co-presented by FilmScene's African Diaspora Committee, the Out of the Archive series is made possible through generous support from the following units: the Black Visual Culture Group (Obermann Center Working Group), the Center for Human Rights, the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Cinematic Arts, the Department of Dance, the Department of English, the Department of History, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the School of Education, the School of Library and Information Science, and the School of Music.