Burning an Illusion. 1981. UK. Written and directed by Menelik Shabazz. With Cassie MacFarlane, Victor Romero Evans, Beverley Martin. Remastering in 2K by the British Film Institute; courtesy Janus Films. New York premiere. 106 min.
Out of the racially volatile climate of 1980s Thatcherite England, a period rent by police brutality and the criminal neglect of Afro-Caribbean and African immigrant communities, there emerged some singular, defiant voices of Black independent cinema, among them Horace Ové, Isaac Julien, and John Akomfrah. The Barbados-born Menelik Shabazz was another of these, and his feature debut, Burning an Illusion, is radical in its deceptive ordinariness, portraying a young Black woman from a supportive working-class London family whose political consciousness is awakened by her live-in lover. The film would anticipate Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It, much as Shabazz’s documentary The Story of Lovers Rock would inspire Steve McQueen’s television series Small Axe.
Killing Time. 1979. USA. Written and directed by Fronza Woods. With Woods. 16mm preservation by the Academy Film Archive; courtesy Women Make Movies. New York premiere. 9 min.
The deadpan wit of Fronza Woods’s brilliant short—about a woman hung up on the most suitable outfit in which to kill herself—belies a serious reflection on the image and place of Black women in contemporary American society.
Fannie’s Film. 1981. USA. Directed by Fronza Woods. With Fannie Drayton. 16mm preservation by the Academy Film Archive; courtesy Women Make Movies. 15 min.
“Windows are a reality and a metaphor in this portrait of a 65-year-old Black woman who works as a cleaner in a Pilates studio” (Amy Taubin).
This program is co-presented with the African Film Festival New York.
Program 130 min.