IN CINEMA
GANJA & HESS
Tickets: $15 General Admission / $7 Reduced Price
Friday, October 25th at 7PM
Bill Gunn, 1973, 113 min.
Flirting with the conventions of blaxploitation and horror, Bill Gunn’s revolutionary independent film GANJA & HESS is a highly stylized and utterly original treatise on sex, religion, and African American identity. Duane Jones (Night of the Living Dead) stars as anthropologist Hess Green, who is stabbed with an ancient ceremonial dagger by his unstable assistant (director Bill Gunn), bestowing upon him the blessing of immortality... and the curse of an unquenchable thirst for blood. When the assistant’s beautiful and outspoken wife Ganja (Marlene Clark) comes searching for her missing husband, she and Hess form an unexpected partnership. Together, they explore just how much power blood holds.
Later recut and released in an inferior version, this edition represents the original release, restored by The Museum of Modern Art with support from The Film Foundation, and mastered in HD from a 35mm negative.
With an extended introduction by film scholar Maya S. Cade!
Maya S. Cade is the creator and curator of Black Film Archive and a scholar-in-residence at the Library of Congress. She has been awarded special distinctions by the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics for the Archive. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, NPR, The Paris Review, Vulture, among other publications. She is the fall 2022 programmer in residence at Indiana University’s Cinema and was the fall 2021 research fellow at Indiana University's Black Film Center & Archive. Originally hailing from New Orleans, Maya is based in Los Angeles.
"A seminal take on Blaxploitation and horror." - The Chicago Reader
"An underground classic...the most complicated, intriguing, subtle, sophisticated and passionate Black film of the '70s." - James Monaco, American Film Now
"A vampire movie masterpiece...The film defies easy classification with its hallucinatory visuals, rich metaphors for addiction, raw sexuality and lyrical dialogue that offers a wholly unique treatise on African-American identity." - Leila Latif, BBC
"The most important Black-produced film since Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song." - The Amsterdam News
"A sensual, scholarly, magic-realist exploration of Black history and Black desire." - The New York Times
"A blood-soaked masterpiece. One of the most profound, surreal and horrifying love stories ever made." - Complex
