AN EVENING of film & performance:
mlk day weekend

In the U.S. popular imagination, no political figure more fully represents the redemptive belief that racial justice names an American national imperative than Martin Luther King, Jr. The massive commercialization accompanying King's birthday as a national holiday has come to stand in for the fulfillment of U.S. multiracial democracy. The United States has rewritten King's longstanding engagement in an international and anti-imperial struggle for Black liberation as a singular man's American "dream", regardless of the ongoing, state-sponsored assault on Black social, political, and economic power in this and every American century.

This evening of film and performance during Martin Luther King, Jr. Day weekend seeks to create a space for art, film, and, always, family. We also come together to celebrate the life and memory of Timothy Dean and Gemmel Moore. Any donations collected at the event will be donated to Third Wave Fund, the first sex worker-led fund with the dual goal of funding a diverse range of sex worker-led groups throughout the country and bringing current and former sex workers to the philanthropic decision-making table.

ALEX ASHE is a filmmaker and photographer from Brooklyn, New York, whose work has been featured by Saint Heron, The Fader, and Rolling Stone. He was the gaffer for HBO’s ‘Random Acts of Flyness’, and a cinematographer on the documentary series ‘Time: The Kalief Browder Story’. In his film, ‘Mr. Parker’, Legendary soul singer Lee Fields stars as the inimitable James Parker, a soul man whose glory days have come and gone.

JOSH BEGLEY is a data artist and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York. He is the creator of Metadata+, an iPhone app that tracks United States drone strikes. Begley is the director of two short films, ‘Concussion Protocol’ (2018) and ‘Best of Luck with the Wall’ (2016), both produced by Academy Award-wining director Laura Poitras. His films have screened at the Whitney Museum of America Art, The Met Breuer, the New York Film Festival, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Currently the Data Artist-in-Residence at First Look Media, Begley’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, and at the New Museum of Contemporary Art. He teaches at Columbia Law School.

SONIA LOUISE DAVIS engages improvisation across installation, writing, weaving, and performance. Her work is informed by critical race and feminist theory, as well as her training as a jazz vocalist. She has performed at the Whitney Museum of American Art and published in Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory. An honors graduate of Wesleyan University and alumna of the Whitney Independent Study Program, Sonia lives and works in Harlem.

JUSTIN DENIS is a Nuyorican filmmaker from New York City’s Lower East Side. His short film ‘8 Million Miles From Hintahood’ was an Official Selection at the 2018 Blackstar Film Festival and Urbanworld, among others. He is a 2019 Sundance Institute Screenwriters Intensive Fellow. ‘8 Million Miles From Hintahood’: As a fog of mysterious origin engulfs those communities most vulnerable, a toxin clouds the mind with a sense of collapse. Explanations are proposed; containment rationalized. The core must be preserved. Various covenants of dispossession, dissolution, ad displacement are enacted. A total border is built. Histories trapped within. Generations pass. Cracks emerge. The fog is spotted. Now, growing at an alarming rate. The cracks are plugged, but there are many more than previously believed, pulsating at a furious pace. Some break, creating small holes wherein waves of sound flow through. Poly-rhythmic. Harmonic. Must hear noting more than cacophony. Others, an unbreakable code. But some know, a blueprint.

Using a wide variety of photo-based and print-making processes and, more recently, sound and performance, IVAN FORDE retells stories from epic poems such as ‘Paradise Lost’ and the ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’, casting himself as every character. By crafting his own unique mythology and inserting himself in historical narratives, he connects the personal to the multiversal and offers a new view of prevailing narratives in the broader culture. Ivan has been included in recent group exhibitions and performances at The Jewish Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. He is the recipient of the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans and has been granted residencies at the Lower East Side Printshop, Pioneer Works, and Civitella Ranieri. He received a BA in Literature from SUNY Purchase College and an MFA in Printmaking at Columbia University.

AFRICANUS OKOKON is a Minnesota-born interdisciplinary artist and experimental musician currently based in New Haven, Connecticut. ‘Nsibidi Loops’ is a story told through animated Nsibidi symbols recorded in ‘Further Notes on 'Nsibidi Signs with Their Meanings from the Ikom District, Southern Nigeria’ from the July–December 1911, ‘Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland and Man’ and found videos sourced from YouTube. The ancient symbols morph and transform into each other in hand-drawn animation, and a loose definition of each symbol is translated simultaneously through video. Nsibidi is an indigenous system of symbols native to current-day southeastern Nigeria and are primarily used in the Ekpe secret society.

NAIMA RAMOS-CHAPMAN’s first short, ‘And Nothing Happened’, explores the psychological aftermath of sexualized violence and premiered at the 2016 Slamdance Film Festival. It also screened at the LA Film Festival, BAMcinemaFest, Blackstar Film Festival, Rooftop Films, Urbanworld, CinemAfrica in Stockholm and Tacoma Film Festival, where it won Best Director. It is now a Vimeo Staff Pick. Currently, Naima is in post-production for her second short, ‘Piu Piu’, which received generous support from Art Matters, Rooftop Films, and the Adrienne Shelly Foundation. In 2017, Naima received a fellowship from the Sundance Institute for Screenwriting Intensive for her first feature-length script ‘Sad Songs in Languages I Don’t Understand’, currently in development. In a previous life, Naima told stories as a journalist exploring the intersections of race, gender, pop culture, and economics. Some of her writing can be found in no particular order, on Colorlines, Saint Heron, Postbougie, The Nation, and Huffington Post, to name a few.

ÄSIN X is a 22 year old, multifaceted artist and musician. I was born in the Bronx, raised in East New York. I enjoy a number of expressions on the spectrum of art, including poetry, play writing, music, fine arts, dance, and singing. What do I feel about the world and possibly my place in it? I suppose I feel fluidity; I am completely aware and understand the essence of inevitable transcendent change. I don’t feel inclined to confirm. Or solidify my being into anything beyond creating, loving, and being a better person than I was yesterday.