Prismatic Ground Presents: Christopher Harris 

Co-Presented by Canyon Cinema

Prismatic Ground Presents: Christopher Harris is screening in the cinema for $15/$7 reduced on July 28 and 29 

Prismatic Ground is a New York festival centered on experimental documentary and avant-garde film. During the second edition, May 4-8, 2022, filmmaker Christopher Harris was honored with the ‘Ground Glass Award’— co-presented by legendary avant-garde distributor Canyon Cinema— for outstanding contribution to the field of experimental media. Following an online presentation of his work during the festival, Harris will appear in person at Maysles Cinema to present two programs, including his own films alongside those by a handful of other filmmakers. Each night’s program will be unique. On Thursday, July 28th, the program will be followed by a conversation between Michael B. Gillespie and Harris, and on Friday, July 29th a conversation between Harris and Yasmina Price.

Thursday, July 28

Lessons in Semaphore
Cauleen Smith, 2013, 4 min.

In this 16mm film shot on the south side of Chicago, choreographer Taisha Paggett dances with two flags in an attempt to communicate in semaphore. She meets a young boy, Malik, who appears to speak her language. The film plays out like a celebration of dialogue, despite the silence that surrounds it. -IFFR

The City & The City
Mariam Ghani, 2015, 29 min.
The City & The City is a video with a narrative told through voice-over and staged onscreen by choreographed performers, in a series of dreamlike or fragmented scenes set throughout St. Louis. The video was inspired by China Miéville’s 2009 sci-fi noir novel The City & The City, and maps the conceptual framework of that novel onto the cityscape of St. Louis, melding some of the fictions of the novel’s world with elements drawn from past and present histories of the city. -Mariam Ghani

still/here
Christopher Harris, 2001, 60 min.

The Academy Film Archive’s completed restoration of Harris’s seminal film plays in New York for the first time. Charting the ruinous post-industrial topography of St. Louis, still/here reveals the layers of racialized history buried beneath urban blight, and poetically evokes the natural associations between cinema, memory, absence and light. 

Program followed by a conversation between Christopher Harris, filmmaker Mariam Ghani, and writer/scholar Michael B. Gillespie. 

Friday, July 29

Broken Tongue
Monica Savirón, 2013, 3 min.

Mainly made with images from the January 1st issues of “The New York Times” since its beginning in 1851 to 2013, BROKEN TONGUE is a heartfelt tribute to avant-garde sound performer Tracie Morris's poem “Afrika”. - Monica Savirón

Shove it Over 
Zora Neale Hurston, 1939, 3 min. (audio)

Crow Requiem
Cauleen Smith, 2015, 11 min.

A Speculation: Humans are estranged from our origins. We left the commonwealth of Animals and declared ourselves the custodians of that dominion. And now We are Man; and all else is Other. Our knowledge of ourselves is a fog that consumes us. We cannot see past it, because we do not want to look into it. There are more than two points of view, but the fog makes it difficult to see. This is a sad song, a blues song, an elegy for the past sphere of consciousness we abandoned in favor of eating our own young. - Cauleen Smith

Crow Dance
Zora Neale Hurston, 1939, 2 min. (audio)

Halimuhfack
Christopher Harris, 2016, 4 min.

A performer lip-syncs to archival audio featuring the voice of author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston as she describes her method of documenting African American folk songs in Florida.

Astro Black: Race for Space
Soda Jerk, 2010, 6 min.

Titled in tribute to Sun Ra’s 1972 album, Astro Black is an ongoing multi-channel video cycle informed by the history of sampling and the cultural theories of Afrofuturism. Taking the cosmic jazz musician Sun Ra as a point of departure, this speculative history seeks to draw out the nexus of science fiction and social politics in Black Atlantic culture.

This episode of Soda Jerk’s Astro Black video cycle considers the origins and politics of Sun Ra's Afrofuturist mythology. 

-Soda Jerk

Uncle Bud
Zora Neale Hurston, 1939, 3 min. (audio)

The Red Album or a Poetic Intent
Miryam Charles, 2019, 5 min.

Following a crushing defeat, a group of vigilantes get together to record an album of revolutionary songs.

SHE GATHER ME
Miatta Kawinzi, 2021, 11 min.

SHE GATHER ME, titled after a line from Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, is a poetic meditation on the resonance of different physical and mental landscapes of the African Diaspora. Through analog and digital film, video, and audio, this piece presents alternative ways of considering place and the search for a space of belonging & refuge. - Miatta Kawinzi

Program followed by a conversation between Christopher Harris and writer/programmer Yasmina Price.