IN CINEMA
MADE IN HARLEM – THE LAFARGUE CLINIC REMIXED
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN HARLEM?
Thursday, February 22 at 7PM
Communist Party USA, 1949, 10 min. 16mm print
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN HARLEM? was produced by the Communist Party USA as a campaign film for council member Benjamin Davis. (Davis was one of the few communists ever to hold city office in New York. Later the same year the film was made, Davis was prosecuted for violating the Smith Act and sentenced to five years in prison.) WHAT’S HAPPENING IN HARLEM? is a hard-hitting political short that discusses the economic exploitation of and police violence against African American and Puerto Rican residents of Harlem. The film depicts the ongoing effects of the second wave of the Great Migration.
16mm print courtesy of Jake Perlin.
Preceded by:
KOCH: MAKING A MISTAKE
Neil Barksy (POV season 27, episode 12), 2014, 4 min.
After promising to keep it open, former NYC Mayor, Ed Koch (who served three terms from 1978 to 1989) closed Sydenham Hospital in Harlem.
Post-screening discussion with Kazembe Balagun; Dr. Mark Naison, Professor of African & African American Studies and History at Fordham University, author of Communist in Harlem During the Great Depression and Before the Fires, An Oral History of African American Life in the Bronx from the 1930’s to the 1960’s.
Made In Harlem – The LaFargue Clinic Remixed
Founded by Reverend Sheldon Hale Bishop (Pastor of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church that housed the clinic in Harlem) with co-founders Richard Wright (author of “Native Son” and former Harlem bureau chief for the Communist Party’s Daily Worker) and Fredric Wertham (German psychoanalyst who emigrated to the United States after the rise of the Nazi Party), The Lafargue Clinic was the first of its kind in Harlem: a pay-as-you-wish anti-racist mental health clinic, staffed largely by volunteers. Operating 1946-1958 out of the basement of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, The Lafargue Clinic pioneered a form of social medicine that linked patients' medical needs with the struggle for housing and economic justice. MADE IN HARLEM – THE LAFARGUE CLINIC REMIXED is a series of films, talks, and seminars on the legacy of this groundbreaking Harlem institution and its impact today on radical healthcare organizing, mutual aid, and collective wellbeing.
Curated by Kazembe Balagun
This series is made possible with the generous support of the West Harlem Development Corporation (WHDC)
“The films in this series look to highlight the cost of white oppression on the Black psyche starting with Richard Wright’s “Native Son” and following with Issac Julien’s “Black Skin White Mask,” which looks at the life of Franz Fanon. We also have a rare 16mm documentary produced by the Communist Party for city council candidate Ben Davis, “What’s Happening in Harlem,” which also underscores the connection between racism, police brutality and health care.”
