Black Mother: an audio-visual love letter
Wed, May 20
|Virtual Cinema @ Epsilon Spires
Part film, part baptism, director Khalik Allah brings us on a spiritual journey through Jamaica. Thoroughly immersed between the sacred and profane, Black Mother channels rebellion and reverence into a deeply personal ode informed by Jamaica’s turbulent history but existing in the urgent present.
Time & Location
May 20, 2020, 12:00 AM – Jun 03, 2020, 11:59 PM
Virtual Cinema @ Epsilon Spires
About the event
Tickets are $12, Watch: https://grasshopperfilm.vhx.tv/products/epsilon-spires-presents-black-mother
A proclamation, a poem and a prayer punctuated by three trimesters; Black Mother is an audio-visual love letter to Jamaica. Soaking up its bustling metropolises and tranquil countryside, director Khalik Allah introduces us to a succession of vividly rendered souls who call this island home. Their candid testimonies create a polyphonic symphony, set against a visual prayer of indelible portraiture shot in variety of analog and digital formats.
An online discussion of Black Mother will be led by Shanta Lee Gander, on Tuesday June 2nd, 7pm.
Zoom Link to Join the Conversation: https://zoom.us/j/93111712827
Shanta Lee Gander is an artist and multi-faceted professional. As an artist, her endeavors include writing prose, poetry, investigative journalism, and photography. Her poetry, prose, and personal essays have been featured in Rebelle Society, on the Ms. Magazine blog, The Commons weekly newspaper. Shanta Lee is the co-author of Ghosts of Cuba: An Interracial Couple’s Exploration of Cuba in the Age of Trump—Told in Images & Words (Green Writers Press, Spring 2020). She is currently the director of outreach and publicity for Mount Island—a small press and magazine dedicated to rural LGBTQ+ and POC voices/artists and gives lectures on the life of Lucy Terry Prince as a member of the Vermont Humanities Council Speakers Bureau. Shanta Lee’s work can be viewed at www.Shantaleegander.com
Critical Praise for the Film:
- "Stunning. Transformative. Black Mother may be the most fearless film I’ve seen in a decade." — Scout Tafoya, Frameland
- "An undeniably transcendental spiritual awakening in audiovisual form." — Carlos Aguilar, Los Angeles Times
- "Critic’s Pick! Black Mother announces itself as an evocation, invocation and chronicle of birth and life." — Glenn Kenny, The New York Times
- "The best documentary of the year! A combination of city symphony and verité intimacy… Confirms Allah as a dynamic emerging voice in the arena of nonfiction filmmaking.” — Slant
- “One of the most original cinematographers of the time. Allah also edited the film, and his complex sense of audiovisual composition—textural, tonal, thematic, rhythmic, philosophical—is as original and as personal as his cinematography.” — Richard Brody, The New Yorker
- “One of the ten best documentaries of the year.” — Hyperallergic