Made In Harlem: Home To Harlem
Screening FREE June 9-June 30, 2022
In Collaboration with: the Documentary Forum at City College, Third World Newsreel, Centro Civico Cultural Dominicano, Children’s Art Carnival, and XFR Collective
CURATORIAL NOTE
Oscar Micheaux’s 1932 talkie, The Girl From Chicago has a sweet scene that evokes my parents’ marriage origin story; standing in front of a flowery hydrangea bush, urbanite Alonzo proposes to whisk away southern ingenue, Norma, from Mississippi to New York City, “Home to Harlem and all that goes with it!” She declaims:
Home to Harlem. But I’ve never been to Harlem or New York, dear, though I have always wanted to go. They say you’ll love it, Harlem, after you’ve been there a while. No end to theaters…And nightclubs with good singing and dancing until the wee hours of the morning.
"Home to Harlem" presents Harlem through an archival lens as both an actual home for Black citizens and families (like my Harlemite father, “Buddy” and Maconite mother, “Junior”) and as a location in the popular imagination of African Americans, by exploring the multiple intersections of documentary, amateur films, home movies, musical shorts, nontheatrical materials, family archives and the preservation of cultural artifacts of the community. The series will also spotlight film exhibition in Harlem as innovated by Jessie Maple and LeRoy Patton’s 20 West: Home of Black Cinema.
Community archiving, preservation, restoration and archival materials enlivened by access, moves our understanding of Harlem beyond memory and nostalgia. These activities can rebuild the substrata or “carriers” of images on a seemingly lost, discolored or faded film. Retrieved and renewed, the images become more complexly resonant. The films in this series suggest a network of associations between the audio-visual documents of the extant place and of the cinematic imaginary. I have never lived in Harlem but it is deeply my (movie) home.
-Ina Diane Archer, daughter of Lee and Ina
Curated by Ina Archer and Emily Apter
Generously funded by West Harlem Development Corporation and Harlem Community Development Corporation.
16mm Shorts Program – America's Negro Metropolis
Harlem Trade Union Council Convention (1949), Life in Harlem: A Documentary Film of America's Negro Metropolis (1940), A People’s Playhouse (1944), From These Roots (1974)
Cotton Comes to Harlem in St. Nicholas Park
Cotton Comes to Harlem (Ossie Davis, 1970, 97 min)
Community Archiving Pop-up Event
Digitize your VHS home movies with the XFR Collective!
Diary of a Harlem Family, In The Street & The Friends
Diary of a Harlem Family (Gordon Parks, 1968), In The Street (Helen Levitt, 1948), and The Friends (Kathe Sandler, 1996) screening at City College & streaming virtually!
16mm Shorts Program – Cab Calloway and Many More
Cab Calloway’s Home Movies (1948-1955), Minnie The Moocher and Many Many More (1981), Cab Calloway’s Jitterbug Party (1935)
Jessie Maple’s Home for Black Cinema
Screening of Sisters (Yvonne Welbon, 2003) and Unspoken Conversation (Iman Uqdah Hameen, 1987)
16mm Shorts Program – A Night of Hi-De-Ho!
Harlem Bound (1935), Smash Your Baggage (1932), Symphony in Black — A Rhapsody of Negro Life (1935), The Black Network (1936)
If you continue to have difficulties streaming, please contact us at virtual@maysles.org or text/call (646) 853-1296 before 8pm.
