Assembly of Images: On Histories of Race and Representation is a three-month series featuring films by Edward Owens, Garrett Bradley, Crystal Z Campbell, and Christopher Harris that explore and provide counterpoint to the history of race and the representation of Black Americans in cinema and photographic traditions. These filmmakers’ works are steeped in memory, history, and deeply personal imaginings that linger in between lived realities and cinematic dreaming. Grounded in experimental formats, nonfiction storytelling, and independent filmmaking, these selections reframe and remix representations of joy and love, identity and perception, and struggle and resilience, and harness the power in claiming the narrative, mining archives, and sharing histories.
The title Assembly of Images is taken from a quote by Garrett Bradley in Artforum about her film America: “I see America as a template for how visual storytelling and the assembly of images can serve as an archive of the past and a document of the present.”
Co-presented with San Francisco Cinematheque.
Header Image: Crystal Z Campbell, Go-Rilla Means War (still), 2017; image: courtesy the artist