• • When

    Sunday, February 19, 2012
  • Time

    2:00pm until 5:00pm

• Sunday, February 12, 2012
• Time: 1:00pm until 4:00pm

Footage shot by a group of Swedish journalists documenting the Black PowerMovement in the United States is edited together by a contemporary Swedish filmmaker.

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Where

• • When

    Saturday, February 4, 2012
  • Time

    Starts at 3:30pm 

COME BACK, AFRICA Friday, February 3 – Wednesday, February 8 Joining us on OPENING NIGHT, the heralded & gracious VUKANI MAWATHU CHOIR, often called “the spirit of the movement” and “cultural ambassadors of good will.” Will perform a set of inspirational freedom songs of Southern Africa on Feb 3rd in the Big Theater! SAN FRANCISCO PREMIERE! “This film was made secretly to portray the true conditions of life in South Africa today. There are no professional actors in this drama of the faith of a man and his country. This is the story of Zachariah – one of the hundreds of thousands of Africans forced each year off the land by the regime and into the gold mines.” So begins COME BACK, AFRICA, Lionel Rogosin’s (ON THE BOWERY) powerful and unflinching 1959 feature film. Away from his village and ambling from one dehumanizing job to another, Zachariah experiences first-hand the extent to which apartheid South Africa will go to rob an honest man of his dignity. This stunning, scathing docudrama won praise abroad and was utterly ignored in the USA upon its initial release, spurring Rogosin to lease and program the groundbreaking Bleecker St. Cinema in New York, which opened COME BACK, AFRICA in 1960 and ignited an intellectual and aesthetic revolution in New York City, the reverberations of which are still being felt today. The film’s restoration – by the Cineteca Bologna and the laboratory L’Imagine Ritrovata with the collaboration of Rogosin Heritage and the Anthology Film Archive – serves not only to bring in focus the amazing sociological evidence of the footage, but also to stun us with how recently these barbaric practices were committed. Dir: Lionel Rogosin. Starring Zacharia Mgabi and Venah Bendile. 1959/2012. USA. Subtitles. 84 mins. Nightly at 6:45pm & 8:30pm, plus Sat. + Sun. at (2:30pm) & 4:15pm

SAN FRANCISCO 

More Than a Month
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 @ 5:45pm
San Francisco Main Public Library

The Film

Shukree Hassan Tilghman, a 29-year-old African-American filmmaker, sets out on a cross-country campaign to end Black History Month. He stops in various cities, wearing a sandwich board, to solicit signatures on his petition to end the observance. He explains that relegating Black History Month to the coldest, shortest month of the year is an insult, and that black history is not separate from American history. Through this thoughtful and humorous journey, he explores what the treatment of history tells us about race and equality in a “post-racial” America.

His road trip begins in Washington, D.C., crisscrosses the country during Black History Month 2010, and ends with an epilogue one year later. Each stop along the journey explores Black History Month as it relates to four ideas: education, history, identity, and commercialism.

Tilgman’s campaign to end Black History Month is actually a provocative gambit to open a public conversation about the idea of ethnic heritage months, and whether relegating African American history to the shortest month of the year — and separating it from American history on the whole — denigrates the role of black people and black culture throughout American history. But it is also a seeker’s journey to reconcile his own conflicting feelings about his own identity, history, and convictions.

More Than a Month is not just about a yearly tradition, or history, or being black in America. It is about what it means to be an American, to fight for one’s rightful place in the American landscape, however unconventional the means, even at the risk of ridicule or misunderstanding. It is a film is about discovering oneself.

The Filmmakers

1. Shukree Hassan TilghmanDirector
2. Owen CooperProducer

PLAYING NOW!!

SAN FRANCISCO THEATRICAL PREMIERE! Exploding out of South Central LA with a previously unthinkable and utterly undeniable funk-thrash swing and a joyously chaotic stage show, Fishbone quickly ascended to the top of the hyper-competitive heap of Hollywood club bands in the 1980s. But selling something so awesome and unusual to the American public? That’s where the trouble began. EVERYDAY SUNSHINE ecstatically traces the tangled threads, simultaneously shooting straight about Angelo Moore and Norwood Fisher’s dogged persistence in continuing the band amidst innumerable setbacks. Dirs: Lev Anderson & Chris Meltzer. Interviews with past and present members of Fishbone, Flea, No Doubt, George Clinton, Mike Watt, Tim Robbins & ?uestlove. 2010. Digital. 103 mins. Nightly at 7:15pm & 9:15pm, plus Sat. + Sun. at (3:15pm) & 5:15pm.