JA’TOVIA GARY — THE GIVERNY DOCUMENT

I want to corroborate Black women’s reality. Some of us feel safe and some of us do not, but within that spectrum, there’s grief, there’s relief, there’s whimsy. There are feelings of anxiety and apprehension, but also faith and trust. Our inner world is layered and super vast, and I want us to be able to see that depicted on the screen, witness Black women having these interior moments…

I call myself a director who edits, but I’m probably an editor who directs … The idea of handing this over to someone else is so foreign, so counterintuitive. For me, that’s where the real making takes place. So my process is sourcing footage from everywhere, whether that be the internet or some image I’m creating myself or a collaboration with a DP or an archive. But the actual process begins once we sit down at that hard drive, because it’s important for me to have that level of control. — Ja’Tovia Gary, interview with Rooney Elmi, 2019

This week at the AFI FEST presented by Audi, Gary brings her new 40-minute film THE GIVERNY DOCUMENT—which incorporates footage shot in New York City and at Monet’s historic gardens in France.

THE GIVERNY DOCUMENT will be preceded by BLACK BUS STOP (9 min,), directed by Kevin Jerome Everson and Claudrena N. Harold.

THE GIVERNY DOCUMENT—SHORTS PROGRAM 6

Tuesday, November 19, at 7:45 pm.

Wednesday, November 20, at 3:15 pm.

Chinese Theatre

6801 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles.

From top: Ja’Tovia Gary, image courtesy and © the artist and the photographer; Ja’Tovia Gary, The Giverny Document (2019), images courtesy and © the artist.

DONNA DE SALVO ON WARHOL

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As part of the Warhol Lecture Series, Donna De Salvo—curator of the exhibition ANDY WARHOL—FROM A TO B AND BACK AGAIN, organized by the Whitney and now at the Art Institute of Chicago—will talk about the artist’s impact and importance, followed by a reception and dinner on the Near North Side.

DONNA DE SALVO

Wednesday, November 20, at 6 pm.

Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall

111 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago.

Reception and Dinner

Luxbar

18 East Bellevue Place, Chicago.

Andy Warhol—From A to B and Back Again, Art Institute of Chicago, October 20– January 26, 2020, from top: Self-Portrait, 1966, Art Institute of Chicago; Gun, 1981–82, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Nine Jackies, 1964, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Ladies and Gentlemen (Marsha P. Johnson), 1975, Museum Brandhorst, Munich; Green Coca-Cola Bottles, 1962, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Skull, 1976, collection Larry Gagosian; Big Electric Chair, 1967–1968, Art Institute of Chicago; Shot Orange Marilyn, 1964. Images courtesy and © the lenders and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

DARRYL PINCKNEY AND MARGO JEFFERSON IN CONVERSATION

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Darryl Pinckney—longtime contributor to the New York Review of Books and the author of the novel Black Deutschland—will join Margo Jefferson for a conversation about the essays in his new collection Busted in New York, the “cumulative effect of [which]… is a contextualization of recent history in a manner only Pinckney’s prose can articulate.”*

BUSTED IN NEW YORK—DARRYL PINCKNEY WITH MARGO JEFFERSON*

Monday, November 18, at 6:30 pm.

New York Public Library

Wachenheim Trustees Room

476 Fifth Avenue (at 42nd Street), New York City.

From top: Darryl Pinckney, photograph by Dominique Nabokov; Darryl Pinckney, Busted in New York and Other Essays, 2019, cover image courtesy and © Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Margo Jefferson, Negroland: A Memoir, 2015, cover image courtesy and © Pantheon; Jefferson. Images courtesy and © the authors and photographers.

THE BODY REMEMBERS WHEN THE WORLD BROKE OPEN

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A visceral exploration of abuse in Vancouver’s Indigenous community and a key work of contemporary feminist cinema, THE BODY REMEMBERS WHEN THE WORLD BROKE OPEN will screen twice at the AFI FEST presented by Audi.

Writer-directors Kathleen Hepburn and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers—who also co-stars in the film—will join actor Violet Nelson for post-screening Q & A’s.

A love poem to women, THE BODY REMEMBERS WHEN THE WORLD BROKE OPEN weaves a compellingly simple story around the complex themes of racialized female bodies, a country’s failure to support its most vulnerable youth, and the continuing effects of colonial violence. Inspired by true events, this intimate, immersive film was shot on location in East Vancouver on 16mm film, in real time.

THE BODY REMEMBERS WHEN THE WORLD BROKE OPEN

Tuesday, November 19, at 8:30 pm.

Wednesday, November 20, at 12:45 pm.

Chinese Theatre

6801 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles.

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn, The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (2019), from top: Violet Nelson; ARRAY poster; Tailfeathers (left) and Nelson; Nelson and Tailfeathers. Photographs by Katrin Bragadottir. Images courtesy and © the filmmakers, the actors, the photographer, AFI FEST, and ARRAY Releasing.

HILTON ALS — LIVES OF THE PERFORMERS

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Performers really write with their bodies. If you give them a piece of writing, it becomes a completely different thing once it’s spoken and acted by a performer. The strange alchemy that they’re able to do has everything to do with energy and the force of their imagination…

What I love about actors, really, is that they only have their history and their observation of the world to call on. It’s actually sort of like learning how to play poker really well: you have to make that decision so quickly… They’re in touch with the cosmic reality of life and also the memory of life. In the way that writers excavate, actors embody. — Hilton Als, PARIS LA 16

LAXART and the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens present LIVES OF THE PERFORMERS, a work-in-progress by Hilton Als.

The piece is directed by Peter Born and will be performed by Helga Davis and Victoire Charles—the Los Angeles stand-in for Okwui Okpokwasili, who was in a previous iteration.

LIVES OF THE PERFORMERS

Sunday and Monday, November 17 and 18, at 7:30 pm.

LAXART

7000 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles.

Hilton Als, Lives of the Performers, from top: Helga Davis in performance at Triple Canopy; Davis; Victoire Charles; Hilton Als at the Soho Playhouse, New York City, January 19, 2018, photograph by Ali Smith; Davis and Okwui Okpokwasili at Triple Canopy. Images courtesy and © the author, the performers, and the photographers.