Film scholar and programmer Nzingha Kendall and filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich propose to explore alternative narrative-making grounded in radical black intellectual production, responding to what Saidiya Hartman refers to as “silence in the archive.” They ask how can black storytellers work in the realm of reality when traditional records of reality historically rendered black subjecthood invisible? How might the transparency imposed on minoritized subjects be resisted by employing gaps and fragments to achieve strategic opacity? By interrogating film form and genre, they seek to extend possibilities for moving images to resuscitate embodied, spiritual, and coded understandings of black experiences.
We’re thrilled to present a program of Madeleine’s works as part of the film selection of the pair’s UNDO FELLOWSHIP research topic, Archive Repair.
This program is a part of BREAK ꩜UT: A SYMPOSIUM OF SORTS, which celebrates the research, writing and filmmaking initiated during The UNDO Fellowship. We are excited to share the ideas and work resulting from the inaugural year of this endeavor and are eager to hear your questions, thoughts and feedback.
You’re invited to a series of screenings, study groups, and discussions spread over the first two weekends in March . Choose a single thread of inquiry, or weave the connections between them all. Tune into the stream to watch and listen in or fill out a simple application up for an UNDO STUDY GROUP to get the reader and join a rigorous and creative discussion.
Register for a reminder to catch our public Dialogue with Madeleine and Nzingha on March 14th for a full program experience. If you want to engage a draft of Nzingha’s writing and take an even deeper dive, our Archive Repair Study Group is open by application. Learn more and APPLY!