BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 CALSCALE:GREGORIAN PRODID:edu.community.ucla/1.1.0 METHOD:PUBLISH X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H BEGIN:VEVENT UID:d341232c-dee7-25ef-5bed-c5c2506dfcf8@community.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Afrofuturism: The Last Angel of History / Space is the Place DTSTAMP:20240914T013200Z DTSTART:20241005T023000Z DTEND:20241005T023000Z DESCRIPTION:In-person:\nartist and UCLA Professor Cauleen Smith\; UCLA Scho ol of Theater\, Film and Television Associate Professor Shelleen Greene.\n \nAdmission is free. No advance reservations. Your seat will be assigned t o you when you pick up your ticket at the box office. Seats are assigned o n a first come\, first served basis. The box office opens one hour before the event.\n\nH-E-L-L-O\nU.S.\, 2014\n\nInternationally acclaimed filmmake r\, multimedia artist and UCLA Professor Cauleen Smith collaborated with a vant-garde jazz guitarist Carl LeBlanc to convene the ensemble of New Orle ans musicians who perform in this evocative summoning of creative energies . In 2014\, at historic sites around the city\, local musicians play the i conic five-tone motif from Close Encounters of the Third Kind on a variety of instruments. As the refrain repeats from scene to scene\, Smith transf orms a fictional greeting to aliens into a resonant assuagement of the ali enation experienced by those residents who saw recovery give way to gentri fication in the long wake of Hurricane Katrina.—Paul Malcolm\n\nDCP\, colo r\, 11 min. Director: Cauleen Smith.\n\n \n\nPlanet X\nU.S.\, 2006\n\nPion eering media artist Ulysses Jenkins seized on the possibilities of video p roduction technologies in the late 1970s to challenge the white supremacy behind representations of Black people and Blackness across mainstream med ia. In Planet X\, Jenkins mobilizes still images\, video effects\, local n ews segments and Sun Ra’s interstellar prophesying in voiceover to rework apocalyptic myths of a mysterious planet-killer meteor. Telescoping across the vast reaches of space down to a few city blocks in New Orleans where human tragedy plays out in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina\, Planet X projects a cosmic vision of Black destiny forged through catastro phe and salvation.—Paul Malcolm\n\nDCP\, color\, 6 min. Director: Ulysses Jenkins.\n\n \n\nThe Last Angel of History\nGermany/U.K.\, 1996\n\nAn expe rimental documentary on the roots of Afrofuturism featuring interviews wit h some of its key architects\, The Last Angel of History also plays like a radical transmission from beyond the stars. Director John Akomfrah\, Ghan aian British artist\, filmmaker and co-founder of the influential Black Au dio Film Collective\, evokes the myth of blues guitarist Robert Johnson to frame his exploration of art as a technology for social change. His preem inent evidence is Afrofuturism as conceived and practiced by musicians (De rrick May\, George Clinton)\, novelists (Octavia Butler\, Ishmael Reed) an d critics (Greg Tate\, Kodwo Eshun).—Paul Malcolm\n\nDCP\, color\, 45 min. Director: John Akomfrah. Screenwriter: Edward George.\n\n \n\nSpace Is th e Place\nU.S.\, 1974\n\nSpace Is the Place opens with legendary jazz compo ser and musician Sun Ra strolling purposefully through the forest of an al ien planet. Majestic in Egyptian-style regalia and flanked by two spiritua l adjutants in equally mythic garb\, Ra projects a serene confidence as he deems the lush realm to be the perfect gift for Black people. “The music is different here … we’ll see what they can do on a planet all their own.” But first he must convince them to come. Working against this utopian ope ration is The Overseer (Raymond Johnson)\, a devil-figure in pimp’s clothe s who challenges Ra to a card game for the soul of Black America with a li ttle help from the forces of white supremacy in the form of sinister gover nment agents. A psychedelic allegory with a dose of Blaxploitation\, Space Is the Place emerged when producer Jim Newman and director John Coney app roached Ra about expanding the concert footage of Sun Ra and his Arkestra they had shot for public television into a feature.\n\nRa contributed the interstellar storyline\, a transcendent avant-garde score and a sustained\ , beguiling disquisition on his vision for Black liberation. Offering litt le in the way of a practical program\, Ra centers the imaginary in the str uggle for freedom as only a master conjurer could. As he tells a group of Black youths killing time in an Oakland community center surrounded by ima ges on the walls of Huey Newton\, Bobby Seale\, Angela Davis\, Eldridge Cl eaver and Malcolm X: “I come to you as a myth because that’s what you are. Black people are a myth. You don’t exist.” But through creative expressio n\, Ra transforms this seeming erasure\, this absence\, into the ultimate power to remake social reality.—Paul Malcolm\n\nDCP\, color\, 85 min. Dire ctor: John Coney. Screenwriters: Sun Ra\, Joshua Smith. With: Sun Ra\, Ray mond Johnson\, Christopher Brooks.\n\nEvent Website: https://alumni.ucla.e du/event/afrofuturism-the-last-angel-of-history-space-is-the-place/\n\nEve nt Website: https://alumni.ucla.edu/wp-json/tribe/events/v1/events/142972\ n\nSource: https://community.ucla.edu/event/d341232c-dee7-25ef-5bed-c5c250 6dfcf8 LOCATION:Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum STATUS:CONFIRMED TRANSP:TRANSPARENT X-MICROSOFT-CDO-BUSYSTATUS:FREE END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR