This program of short experimental films and videos expands on the process of ritualizing bodies of knowledge, highlighting the role film plays as a cultural interface that engages sacred reflections and revelations informing the performance of rituals for cultural inheritance. Films from Russel Hlongwane, Francois Knoetze & Amy Wilson, Jim Chuchu, Philippa Ndisi Herrmann, Adebukola Bodunrin & Ezra Clayton Daniels, and anaïs extend the limits of its artistic form to include divergent worldviews. The aforementioned filmmakers use the technological capacity of cinema to manipulate the temporal and spatial in order to stage complex multi-dimensional stories, in turn reproducing memories and re-integrating repressed knowledge systems and cultural heritage.
Curated by Wangechi Ngugi and Daniel Muchina.
Discussion after the screening with, in person, Adebukola Bodunrin & Ezra Clayton Daniels and on Zoom, filmmaker/curator Daniel Muchina.
SCREENING
DZATA: The Institute of Technological Consciousness
Knoetze and Amy Wilson, South Africa, 2022, digital,
color, sound, 8:00
Dzata: The Institute of Technological Consciousness (2023) is a creative research project by South African artists Russel Hlongwane, Francois Knoetze and Amy Louise Wilson. In fabricating a fictional institute and its archive, the artists explore and imagine vernacular technological practices operating across the African continent.
Tapi!
By Jim Chuchu, Kenya, 2020, digital, color, sound, 25:00
Tapi! is a speculative documentary short film that explores the tension between indigenous spiritual practices and modern religious influences in Kenya. Directed by Jim Chuchu as part of The Nest Collective, the film follows Jackson, a young ritual healer and one of the last practitioners of utapishi, a traditional cleansing ceremony.
As local Christian church leaders seek to outlaw the practice, Jackson must confront the erasure of his people's complex history and spiritual traditions. The film was commissioned by the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) as part of their African Collectives Project, receiving its world premiere at IFFR 2020.
spirit moves
UK, 2021, 16mm transferred to digital, color, sound, 6:00
Exploring the ancestral, traditional, cultural and spiritual ties that exist beyond the boundaries of the material dimensions, this art film visualizes the transient spirits that have come before us, watch over us, guide us, and protect us. The characters reference spiritual elements of Senegalese and Afro-Brazilian traditions, commemorating their interconnectivity within the Black diaspora, whilst tracing back anaiis’ traveled upbringing and inspirations. United through movement and ritual, anaiis’ guides are summoned into a meditative ceremony as an ode to the mystical powers that lead her path.
The Golden Chain
by Adebukola Bodunrin & Ezra Clayton Daniels, USA, 2016, digital, color, sound, 6:00
The distant future. A Nigerian space station in a remote corner of the galaxy orbits an artificial pinpoint of matter so dense it cannot exist in our solar system. It is a recreation of the birth of the universe itself, contained for the purpose of study, and overseen by Yetunde, sole crew member on the space station Eko.
Seeds
by Philippa Ndisi Herrmann, Kenya, 2017, digital, color, sound, 4:00
The sea was the first to see us and so the sea will be the last to leave us. A visual poem from Kenya that explores blood memory, creation myths and ancestry.
Afronauts
by Nuotama Bodomo, USA, 2014, digital, b&w, sound, 14:00
It's July 16, 1969 America is preparing to launch Apollo 11. Thousands of miles away, the Zambia Space Academy hopes to beat America to the moon in this film inspired by true events.
Osaina
by Daniel Muchina,
Kenya, 2023, digital, color, sound, 2:00
A ritual performance art film which invokes the intuitive aesthetic powers of two critical elements in ritual practices in Africa, i.e. the human body as a process of being, and water as a living spirit in the alchemical process of purification and transformation.
Tickets: $10 General | $8 Student/Seniors | FREE for LA FIlmforum Members
via link.dice.fm
Wangechi Ngugi is an award-winning film producer and curator based in Nairobi, Kenya. With a deep passion for cinematic storytelling, she collaborates with filmmakers and artists to create impactful and resonant narratives. Wangechi is also the co-founder of Monsoons Creative Studio, a leading film production company in Kenya.
Daniel Muchina is a film & video artist working and living in Nairobi, Kenya. He's the co-founder and director at Monsoons Studio, an independently registered and licensed film production company. Muchina is currently the artistic director, researcher and writer for Art & Science Films Afrika (ASFA) a program designed to investigate ritual practices in prehistoric Africa, and the role art plays as a vestige of the knowledge informing these rituals. Using film and video art, the program seeks to build a bridge to link indigenous systems of knowledge embodied in African mythologies with modern Africa.
Adebukola Bodunrin is a Nigerian-Canadian film and video artist who is interested in the realms of language, culture, and media. Her innovative animations employ unconventional manual and digital techniques to create unique textural and narrative experiences. Her work has been featured at IFFR, Images Festival, Anthology Film Archives, BFI, REDCAT, MCA Chicago, Festival Animator, the Black Cinema House, and is in the permanent collection at the Whitney Museum. Her work on KCET’s “Lost LA” series earned her an LA Area Emmy for segment direction. Her latest short film, We Are Not Alone, marks her debut in live-action direction and had its world premiere at SXSW 2024.
Ezra Claytan Daniels is a mixed-race American multidisciplinary artist and creator of the award-winning graphic novels Upgrade Soul (Oni Press) and BTTM FDRS (Fantagraphics Books). His short story "Pressure," was included in Jordan Peele's NYT Best-Selling horror anthology Out There Screaming, published by Random House. Ezra currently resides in Los Angeles, where he writes for film and television, including Doom Patrol for HBO Max and the upcoming remake of Wes Craven's The People Under the Stairs for Monkeypaw Productions.