Free screening!

16mm preservation print from the UCLA Film and Television Archive, co-presented by the UCLA Department of African-American Studies and the AMIA UCLA Student Chapter

With director Larry Clark in person for a conversation with film curator Jheanelle Brown (LA Filmforum)

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The explosion of African-American filmmakers who came out of UCLA’s film school in the 1970s—collectively referred to as the L.A. Rebellion—produced a groundbreaking body of work that is often difficult to see. Rarely screened, Larry Clark’s expressionistic celebration of Black jazz music and its resistance to commodification is one of the great neglected independent films of the era. When a saxophonist (Nathaniel Taylor) is released from jail, he considers and rejects a white-dominated music industry, seeking instead to reunite with his mentor (Clarence Muse) and his former bandmates. Unavailable on home video, we are honored to present Clark’s debut feature in its original format, with the filmmaker in person—to reappraise a film that, per Clark, “wasn’t made for release, it was made for the revolution.” Winner: Special Jury Prize, Locarno Film Festival (1977)

“One of the rare fiction features about the jazz world made by a black filmmaker… Original and thoughtful, this is a very special first feature, with a feeling for the music that’s boldly translated into film style.” -Jonathan Rosenbaum, The Chicago Reader

“A rarely seen but utterly remarkable graduation feature about jazz, the Attica prison riot, white exploitation of blacks in the music biz and revolution, featuring toothsome footage of Horace Tapscott’s Pan-Afrikan People’s Jazz Arkestra.” -The Guardian

Jheanelle Brown is a film curator/programmer and educator based in Los Angeles whose curatorial practice creates frameworks to explore the boundlessness of Black life in experimental and non-fiction film and video. She is interested in the space between fugitivity and futurity and elevating an ethic of care. Jheanelle is a board member and an associate programmer for Los Angeles Filmforum and recently served as guest co-curator, with Darol Olu Kae, for Black Radical Imagination. Jheanelle was co-curator, with Sarah Loyer, of Time Is Running Out of Time: Experimental Film and Video from the L.A. Rebellion and Today on view at Art + Practice. She is currently Special Faculty at California Institute of the Arts and Distinguished Visiting Artist at Otis College of Art and Design.

Please note: this screening is first-come, first-serve, with priority for those on the RSVP list or with Bruin ID cards.

Doors open at 7:00 and the screening will begin at 7:30pm.