Current Programs + Conversations
It's Time for a break!
Holla for Summer!
We'll be recharging from July 29th - August 16th, 2022.
Check back for our fall programs -
including our annual Between the Frames and AFTER DARK series, and new grant calls!
See y'all soon and take care fam! 🖤
JUNE is
BLACK MUSIC MONTH!
An annual celebration of Black Music in the United States inaugurated by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. BCC celebrates Black Music Month through music documentaries, films, and videos from the African Diaspora worldwide!
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BLACK SONIC EVOLUTIONS 2022
BLACK SONIC EVOLUTIONS continues our annual programming that recognizes Black Music Month.
Last year we partnered with Langston, Henry, Wa Na Wari, and SIFF for a series of talks and shared viewings of music video and visual histories of Black music. The Program was called: Black Spatial Elegance: new cinematic language of global black music. It was a pretty dense and fun program done across 3 weeks with community curated music playlists and just vibing through oral histories and memories.
This year we’ve scaled wayyy back and changed the name to Black Sonic Evolutions.
This time is we are highlighting music documentary films focused on the power of the Black Sonic as a community soundtracking protest force for joy and liberation.
As an online/social media series we’re highlighting Black music documentaries and protest/ revolution films, showing Black liberation histories and the sounds of powerful social and political change. Black musicians and singers throughout the African Diaspora have gifted us lyrical and sonic inspiration that have ignited independence movements, evolutionary civil and human rights, revolutionary protests and sit-ins, organizational + mutual aid, cultural belonging, ancestral memory and upliftment. Our highlights serve as an archive for us to broaden our knowledge of how we have influenced the world at large, through Caribbean Reggae music, Country music, South African Soweto and Jazz, West African Afrobeats, North American Southern Jazz, Hip Hop, and Rhythm and Blues, the roots of Rock n’ Roll, Punk, and more.
Films include:
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Neptune Frost
#BSE #BlackSonicEvolutions 2022
From multi-hyphenate poet and artist Saul Williams, and Rwanda-born artist Anisia Uzeyman, #NeptuneFrost is a thrilling anti-colonialist sci-fi musical.
National Theater Release June 3rd
In SEATTLE June 10 - 29th!
Grand Illusion Cinema co-presented by Black Cinema Collective
SYNOPSIS
Amidst the hilltops of Burundi, a collective of computer hackers emerges from within a coltan mining community, a result of the romance between a miner and an intersex runaway. Set between states of being—past and present, dream and waking life, colonized and free, male and female, memory and prescience—Neptune Frost is an invigorating and empowering direct download to the cerebral cortex and a call to reclaim technology for progressive political ends.
SHOWTIMES
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FRI, June 24th: 7:30 pm
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MON, June 27th: 7:30 pm
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WEDS, June 29th: 7:30 pm
+ last day post screening community chat with
Kamari Bright (artist, video poet)
Berette S Macaulay (artist, curator, founder of BCC)
Isabella L. Price (manager of film programs at LANGSTON)
Neptune Frost
Directed by Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman · 2021
Written and Composed by Saul Williams
Executive Produced by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Stephen Hendel
Starring:
Cheryl Isheja • Bertrand Ninteretse "Kaya Free" • Eliane Umuhire • Dorcy Rugamba • Rebecca Mucyo • Trésor Niyongabo • Eric Ngangare “1Key” • Natacha Muziramakenga • Elvis Ngabo "Bobo" • with the special participation of Cécile Kayirebwa
France, Rwanda, USA
105min · Kino Lober | Dedza Films
Languages: Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Swahili, French, English with English subtitles
ABOUT ARTISTS
Saul Williams (Composer, Co-Director) is an American poet, musician, and actor. He made his acting debut in Marc Levin’s Slam, which he co-wrote. The film won Sundance's Grand Jury Prize and the Cannes Camera D'Or in 1998. Saul was a series regular on Girlfriends and has appeared in films including: K-Pax, Lackawanna Blues, New York, I Love You, Akilla’s Escape (TIFF 2020) and Aujourd'hui- TEY (Alain Gomis) which won 2013's L'Etalon D'Or at FESPACO. Saul was the first African-American to win Best Actor at the festival.
TEY was also awarded The Prize of the City at Venice. In 2014, Saul made his Broadway debut as the lead in Holler If Ya Hear Me, based on the lyrics of Tupac Shakur. Saul has published five books of poetry which have been translated into several languages. As a musician, Saul has released six albums and toured and collaborated with artists including: Kanye West, Nas, Janelle Monae, Nine Inch Nails, Rage Against The Machine, The Roots, Mos Def, Allen Ginsburg, Amiri Baraka, Gil Scott-Heron, TV On The Radio, Blackalicious, and Erykah Badu.
Anisia Uzeyman (Co-Director) is an actress, playwright and director. Born in Rwanda, she studied drama at the Superior School of Theater in France. Her directorial debut Dreamstates was shot entirely on iPhones and starred Saul Williams, William Nadylam and Beau Sia. The film premiered at the LAFF in 2016. She has also directed numerous music videos. As an actress Anisia has starred in, among others, the award winning film Aujourd'hui-TEY where she met Saul Williams, and the feature film Ayiti Mon Amour by Guetty Felin which premiered at TIFF 2017. Her first book, a poetic treatment of her original screenplay Saolomea, Saolomea will be published by Not a Cult this Fall.
Grand Illusion Cinema co-presented by Black Cinema Collective
Screening at Northwest Film Forum!
TRAVESSIAS BRAZILIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2022
Festival CoPresenters:
UW Spanish & Portuguese Studies, Center for Brazilian Studies, Simpson Center, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Center for Global Studies, Black Cinema Collective, Three Dollar Bill Cinema, Show Brazil, and Brazil Center of Seattle
We’re proud to co-present the Travessias Brazilian Film Festival 2022 [Hybrid program] at Northwest Film Forum! WATCH independent films from all over BRAZIL + Free Opening Night concert with EntreMundos Quarteto!
Program Curators:
Emanuella Rodrigues de Moraes, Livia Lima, and Calac Nogueira, supported by Prof. Jonathan Warren, Director of the Center for Brazilian Studies.
Festival Graphics Designer: Lucas Franco Colusso
ABOUT FESTIVAL
Travessias Brazilian Film Festival 2022 gives marginalized voices the mic in discussions of race, sexuality, and governance. This festival of contemporary Brazilian films runs May 19–22 in person, May 19–29 online, with short films about the ebbs and flows of life, identity, and belonging and fierce features from a metacinematic kidnapping drama to an enduring saga of Indigenous Brazilians' fight for land rights.
Tickets are sliding scale and available HERE:
