IN CINEMA
PAT! A REVOLUTIONARY BLACK MOLECULE
Tickets: $15 General Admission / $7 Reduced Price
Saturday, July 27th at 6:30PM
Lupe Family, 2015, 60 min.
Please join us for a very special evening dedicated to the legacy of Black socialist-feminist organizer, writer, thinker, educator, and therapist, Patricia Murphy Robinson, whose under-celebrated legacy shaped the movement for Black women's liberation instrumentally!
Born in 1926 to an “almost rich” family in segregated Maryland, Pat earned degrees in psychotherapy and social work in Boston MA, before moving to Westchester, NY where she volunteered at Planned Parenthood and began organizing alongside Black/Latino women. She was keen on bringing together people of all backgrounds and genders who were willing to think critically about the issues impacting their communities. In her writing work, she drew necessary connections between the racism, male supremacy violence, and class domination uniquely experienced by poor Black women and, as a member of the Organization for African American Unity and close friend of Malcolm X, she was also quick to analyze intra-communal violence—such as misogyny and intimate partner abuse—within movement spaces.
As a mother, educator, and practicing social worker, Pat saw the ways family units often replicated the structures of patriarchal, capitalist exploitation. She was a long-time advocate of reproductive freedom, and her support for birth control and mental health treatment was as much about bodily autonomy as it was about disrupting the bourgeoisie’s control over Black and Brown families. In this way, her sharp political analysis reached all realms of life: the psychological, familial, energetic, societal, and global. Pat was a generous educator and mentor, and helped other women organizers sharpen the tools to write, teach, and struggle with militance and clarity.
After filming an interview with Pat at her kitchen table in 1994, Lupe Family—student, mentee, and friend of Pat’s—wondered how to finish the project: how the heck do I make a film about someone whose legacy persists on levels both molecular and astronomical?
When Pat joined the ancestors in 2013, Lupe was enrolled in the Filmmakers Collaborative documentary production program at Maysles Documentary Center. With the guidance of educator, Christine Peng, and the assistance of fellow student, Kim Parker, Lupe filmed Pat’s memorial service and spoke with Pat’s daughter at the same kitchen table where they’d shot two decades prior.
What resulted was PAT! A REVOLUTIONARY BLACK MOLECULE, a film at once spiritual, playful, fiery, and futuristic. If Pat is but a molecule, then the film illuminates the ways in which mighty groups of atoms radically recombine to form beautiful and complex systems of life. Care!
Introductory remarks from Akeema-Zane and post-screening reflections from Lupe Family and Emily Rose Apter!
For more info on Pat Murphy Robsinson, please visit www.pmrbio.wordpress.com
