Made in collaboration with performer Yolanda Vidato, Water Ritual #1 examines Black women’s ongoing struggle for spiritual and psychological space through improvisational, symbolic acts. Shot in 16mm black-and-white, the film was made in an area of Watts that had been cleared to make way for the I-105 freeway, but ultimately abandoned. Though the film is set in contemporary L.A., at first sight, Milanda and her environs (burnt-out houses overgrown with weeds) might seem to be located in Africa or the Caribbean, or at some time in the past. Structured as an Africanist ritual for Barbara McCullough’s “participant-viewers,” the film addresses how conditions of poverty, exploitation and anger render the Los Angeles landscape not as the fabled promised land for Black migrants, but as both cause and emblem of Black desolation. (Jacqueline Stewart)
American citizens who are normally marginalized, forgotten and left to fend against toxic dumps and other violations, come to understand that the only way to survive and save their communities is to challenge the system head-on.
An educational documentary spanning two continents, opening up a much-needed debate about traditional African spiritual systems; their cosmologies, ideologies and underlying ethical principles.
12-year-old Mira is fascinated by her synchronized swimming trainer and tries to get closer to her, which quickly puts both of them in a situation that’s difficult to interpret.
Fourteen-year-old Jasmin longs to be near her biological mother, Eva. Following her mother’s release from prison, an excursion into the country together becomes a first test for the fledgling mother-daughter relationship.
An unpredictable documentary from a fascinating storyteller, Agnès Varda’s last film sheds light on her experience as a director, bringing a personal insight to what she calls "cine-writing," traveling from Rue Daguerre in Paris to Los Angeles and Beijing.
An intellectually-challenged man and woman meet, fall in love, and are determined to get married, despite the initial objections of their families and friends.
A pair of sexy bisexual nurses live in an apartment building, one floor up from a middle-aged couple and their son Albert, who is busy putting his new science project—a periscope—to good use by spying on the lingerie-wearing lovelies.
A queen has a stepdaughter named Baby Love, whom she wants to sell as a bride to the highest bidder. Four individuals present themselves to the castle to contribute to a kind of auction, but the girl, route to all sexual experiences while still a virgin, prefers to set out and lose virginity with a young knife thrower who is, incidentally, also the queen's lover.
A remote stone house nestles peacefully on the edge of the Yorkshire moors. In the garden. Faith Armstrong describes the flowers and the late afternoon skies to Jack, her blind husband.
Comments
Have you watched Water Ritual #1: An Urban Rite of Purification yet? What did you think about it?
