Join us in collaboration with the Studio Museum in Harlem for a night of Afrofuturistic film exploration. Through the work of Nigerian-Canadian film and video artist, Adebukola Bodunrin, the program aims to provide rich examples of practices, theories, and aesthetics representative of Afrofuturist ideals. This event is part of Carnegie Hall’s Afrofuturism Festival.

We will have an #IntheCinema screening on March 10 and #VirtualCinema screenings from March 11-17.

March 10 screening followed by a live-streamed Q&A with filmmaker Adebukola Bodunrin.

TICKETS ARE FREE!

Films Include:

The Golden Chain 

Adebukola Bodunrin, Ezra Claytan Daniels, 2016, 14 min. digital

The distant future. A Nigerian space station in a remote corner of the galaxy orbits an artificial pinpoint of matter so dense it cannot exist in our solar system. It is a recreation of the birth of the universe itself, contained for the purpose of study, and overseen by Yetunde, sole crew member on the space station Eko.

The Golden Chain is a first time collaboration between experimental filmmaker Adebukola Bodunrin and graphic novelist Ezra Claytan Daniels. Fluent in very different disciplines, the two artists found common ground in their passion for Afrofuturism. Bodunrin has thrived exploring the loose structures and formal play of experimental cinema, while Daniels has met acclaim with rigid, cerebral science fiction graphic novels.

The Golden Chain finds the two artists intertwining their contrasting aesthetics to revisit the themes of the Yoruba creation tale. Obatala’s descent from the heavens to create the earth and mankind becomes an astronaut traveling to the edge of the galaxy to create a new Heaven. Blending traditional motifs with hard science fiction, Bodunrin and Daniels create a world at once fantastical, yet almost plausible, in order to ask the question: "Where will we go, given where we came from?"

​​The Ooli Moves

Adebukola Bodunrin, 2014, 8 min. digital

The Ooli Moves is a piece from Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble's acclaimed avant-garde jazz album, "Intergalactic Beings." The album is inspired by Octavia Butler's influential sci-fi novel series, "Xenogenesis." This afrofuturist music video explores themes of repulsion and desire in its interpretation of the hypnotic mating dance of the mysterious alien race known as the Ooli.

Music by Nicole M. Mitchell (nicolemitchell.com)

From Intergalactic Beings on FPE Records (fperecs.com)

Based on Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood

Gather + Listen

Adebukola Bodunrin, 2014, 4:39 min. digital

Gather + Listen is an animation that focuses on the subtle movements and rhythms that unconsciously happen at an owambe, a Nigerian street party. As people come together in joy, their hearts begin to beat to the same rhythm, as if united in happiness.

even when life is sad, people still have a good time

Adebukola Bodunrin, 2005, 3:46 min. 16mm

A partially destroyed fragment of Powell and Pressburger's 1951 Technicolor dream film Tales of Hoffman, becomes a site of a ruptured fantasy