Film

In February 2023, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam opened its doors to the largest Vermeer exhibition in history. With loans from across the world, this major retrospective will bring together Vermeer’s most famous masterpieces including Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Geographer, The Milkmaid, The Little Street, Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid, Woman Holding a Balance and Includes for the first time the newly restored Girl Reading a Letter at the Open Window. This new Exhibition on Screen film invites audiences to a private view of the exhibition, accompanied by the director of the Rijksmuseum and the curator of the show. A truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! As well as bringing Vermeer’s works together, both the Rijksmuseum and the Mauritshuis in the Hague have conducted research into Vermeer’s artistry, his artistic choices and motivations for his compositions, as well as the creative process behind his paintings.

Join us at 6:00 pm on Tuesday, April 25 for a special screening and conversation with Miami filmmakers and scholars about the history and future of Miami in a Francophone Caribbean context of anticolonialism, poetry, and radical film. The conversation will be moderated by UM School of Communications Professor and Associate Dean of Inclusion and Outreach Terri Francis (she/her). This event will be followed by a reception on the plaza. In "Aimé Césaire: The Mask of Words" (“Le masque des mots”), director Sarah Maldoror depicts a foundational figure of the Négritude movement against the backdrop of 1987 Miami. Maldoror makes the city of Miami a protagonist in her homage to the Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, as her footage shuttles from FIU to the Everglades to the recently-opened Metrorail. Through her juxtaposition of Martinique and Miami, Maldoror raises important questions about the endurance of colonial legacies in both locations. And by linking Black Miami to Aimé Césaire’s poetry and politics, the film makes an urgent case for a Pan-Caribbean coalition of all those “without whom the earth would not be the earth.” The post-film conversation will explore storytelling, surrealism, Négritude, Black Miami history, and filmmaking with Donette Francis (she/her), director for the Center for Global Black Studies at the University of Miami, Marina Magloire (she/her), a Martinican-American scholar and an Assistant Professor of English at University of Miami, Helen Peña (they/them), Dominican-American child of the Atlantic, filmmaker, and community organizer from Miami, FL, and Monica Sorelle (she/they), a Haitian-American filmmaker and artist born and based in Miami. The event includes a reception by Paradis Books and Bread with music by Akia Dorsainvil, aka DJ Pressure Point (he/they). Set list to feature zouk and kompa.

FILM + CONVERSATION EVENT With this film, Camille Billops completes her family's trilogy—three documentaries that cover more than thirty years: Suzanne Suzanne, shown in the New Director's series at the Museum of Modern Art in 1982 revealed how abuse of Suzanne by her father led to her drug addiction. Finding Christa, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1992, told how Camille's unwanted pregnancy led her to put Christa up for adoption and how Christa returned twenty years later to confront her mother. Now, A String of Pearls turns the camera to four generations of men in Camille's family and considers why their fathers died so young. The camera turns to the grandsons, Michael and Peter. Both are handsome, winsome and in jeopardy. Both are without education, jobs or skills to earn a living, and both have children they cannot support. We want them to live, but two doctors from the local hospital trauma ward describe the streets of Los Angeles as a war zone, where the US military sends its doctors to learn about gunshot wounds. In A String of Pearls, Camille takes a hard look into the hearts of the black men in her family. In this film, love blooms.

FILM + CONVERSATION EVENT This startlingly personal documentary presents a moving yet unsentimental view of motherhood and adoption. It explores the feelings surrounding the reunion of a young woman with her birth mother twenty years after being given up for adoption. The reunion is between filmmaker Camille Billops and her own daughter, Christa. Facing the re-encounter with mixed emotions, Billops interrogates her family and friends as well as her own motivations. The result is an original and daring work that challenges social biases about adoption and offers new insight into mother-daughter relationships.

FILM + CONVERSATION EVENT This screening includes a conversation with Stephen Charbonneau moderated by Dr Terri Francis. Camille Billops and James Hatch trace the ways in which Americans have tried to ignore, deny, suppress, contain, tolerate, legislate, mock, and exploit racial discrimination within the United States. Like a modern-day Virgil and Dante, they drive, cajole, and lead their cast through a tour of the contemporary landscape of racism. ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Stephen Charbonneau is an Associate Professor of Film Studies at Florida Atlantic University, where he’s taught courses in film history and film criticism for fifteen years. His books include Projecting Race: Postwar America, Civil Rights, and Documentary Film and InsUrgent Media from the Front (co-edited with Chris Robé).

Pink Floyd’s seminal double album received the film treatment in 1982 with "Pink Floyd – The Wall", featuring a script written by Roger Waters himself and directed by Alan Parker with animated segments by cartoonist Gerald Scarfe. Floyd “Pink” Pinkerton is a depressed and emotionally detached rock star. Over the years, Pink has built a metaphorical (and sometimes physical) wall to guard his psyche, which has endured a number of beatings, including the death of his father at a young age, an oppressively overprotective mother, and a humiliating school system. The soundtrack, featuring all but two of the original album’s songs, is accompanied by disturbing surreal imagery that includes goose-stepping Nazi hammers and a judge drawn as a pair of wig-wearing buttocks. A singular cult classic, "Pink Floyd – The Wall" is an anthem against non-conformity and institutional corruption that still speaks to us 40 years later. Playing at Gables Cinema to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Pink Floyd's historic album The Dark Side of the Moon.

Martial arts student Leroy Green (Taimak) is on a quest to obtain the elusive all-powerful force known as “The Glow.” Along the way, he must battle the evil, self-proclaimed “Shogun of Harlem” – a kung fu warrior known as Sho’nuff (Julius J. Carry III) – and rescue a beautiful singer (Prince protégée Vanity) from an obsessed record promoter. Combining pulsating music, cutting-edge dancing and the best in non-stop action, Berry Gordy’s "The Last Dragon" is kickin’ good fun featuring an amazing Motown soundtrack, including music by Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, Vanity and DeBarge performing their smash hit “Rhythm of the Night .”

Born to slaves in the arid wastes of Northern Brazil and sold by his mother at the age of 7, he pursued his freedom on the mean streets of Lapa, Rio de Janeiro. Jet-black, six feet tall, 13 stone of proud muscle in a silk shirt and tight pants, a cut-throat razor in his back pocket. Karin Aïnouz's extraordinary portrait of the triumphs and tragedy of this explosive and paradoxical personality unfolds against the vibrant, sordid background of Lapa: thronging underworld of pimps and whores, of cut-throats, queers and artists, of dark bars and brothels thick with smoke, drenched in sweat and cheap perfume. A world run through with violence and raw desire, where desperate dreams spring from poverty and squalor. This film screens as part of Dr. Terri Francis' program "Echoing Josephine Baker" and will be followed by a conversation with Mr. Jordan Rogers, a PhD Student and UGrow Communications Fellow in the English Department, College of Arts and Sciences, at the University of Miami.

In much of America, progress in HIV/AIDS treatment suggests the worst is behind us, but every year 50,000 Americans are still diagnosed with the virus that causes AIDS. Astonishingly, it’s one of the leading causes of death of African American women. And nearly half of the Americans with HIV live in the South, where the AIDS epidemic has taken root in rural communities. "Wilhemina's War" is an intimate, personal narrative that tells the story of one family’s struggle with HIV over the course of five years. Despite facing institutional and personal obstacles every step of the way, 62-year-old Wilhemina Dixon works tirelessly to combat the stigma and care for her daughter and granddaughter, both HIV-positive. Emmy award winning journalist and Professor June Cross finds Wilhemina, a one woman army fighting against a systemic dehumanization that’s the result of centuries of racism, and lack of access to drugs and treatment. Her story touches upon many of the structural issues that contribute to the alarming rising trend of HIV-positive women in the South: lack of education, lack of access to quality healthcare, lack of transportation, and silence and stigma in the local church congregations. This urgent documentary lays bare the intersection of poverty, race and politics with women’s health and security in the rural south, while showing determination in the face of adversity, and the triumph of the human spirit. Essential viewing for African-American Studies and Public Health courses. June Cross is a writer and documentary producer who covers the intersection of poverty, race and politics in the United States. She has been a Professor of Journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York since 2006.

Join us for a ScreenDance Miami Festival 2023 Projection Wall Screening with Feature-length Film Selections.