Tag Archives: Lynell George

LYNELL GEORGE ON OCTAVIA BUTLER

I had been making up stories and telling them to myself since I was five or six. Because my mother, in an effort to make me read, refused to tell them to me. I did read. We were lucky enough not to be able to afford a television at the time, so I read everything…Octavia Butler

Lynell George—author of the new book A Handful of Earth, a Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler—will join Los Angeles Times reporter Julia Wick for an online discussion of Butler’s work, life, and legacy.

See link below to register.

THE WORLDS OF OCTAVIA E. BUTLER, WITH LYNELL GEORGE

Wednesday, November 18.

7 pm on the West Coast; 10 pm East Coast.

From top: Octavia Butler, photograph by Patti Perret, image © the photographer, courtesy of the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens; Lynell George, A Handful of Earth, a Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler (2020) cover image courtesy and © Angel City Press; Lynell George, photograph courtesy of the author; George, No Crystal Stair: African Americans in the City of Angels (1992), cover image courtesy and © Verso.

ROGER GUENVEUR SMITH AT THE HAMMER

“…Supermarkets, assembly-lines, teen-posts firmly shuttered, one after another. Old structures stand and rot in the sun….decrepit schools, poorly funded community services, inadequate health services, jammed low-income housing. It is the fallout that has firmly secured the media’s eye, not the abundant reasons for it.” — Lynell George, 1992*

To mark the 25 years since the uprising in April and May, 1992, the Hammer Museum and Roger Guenveur Smith present Spike Lee’s new Netflix film of Smith’s performance piece RODNEY KING. This is the ninth Smith–Lee collaboration, and is co-presented with the UCLA Department of History, and the UCLA Interdepartmental Program in Afro-American Studies.

Following the screening, there will be a Q & A with Smith—who wrote a performance piece in 1991 that predicted the events of the following year—and UC Santa Barbara Professor Stephanie Batiste. Join them afterwards for a reception in the Hammer’s courtyard, featuring a live DJ set by the film’s composer Marc Anthony Thompson (aka Chocolate Genius).

 

RODNEY KING, Tuesday, May 2, at 7:30 pm. Free.

HAMMER MUSEUM, Westwood, Los Angeles.

hammer.ucla.edu/programs-events/2017/05/rodney-king/

*Lynell George, No Crystal Stair: African–Americans in the City of Angels (New York: Verso, 1992), 4.

Roger Guenveur Smith in his one-man show Rodney King. Image credit: Craig Schwartz, Star-Tribune

Roger Guenveur Smith in his one-man show Rodney King.
Image credit: Craig Schwartz, Star-Tribune

MY ATLAS

Morvern Callar (2002) dir. Lynne Ramsay

Morvern Callar (2002) dir. Lynne Ramsay

This summer, the Clockshop presents a series of films, My Atlas, curated by Julia Meltzer, Sasha Archibald and Courtney Stephens. On Thursday July 10th at 7:30PM, outside in the Elysian courtyard, at 2806 Clearwater St., Los Angeles, CA 90039, the series begins with the film Morvern Callar (2002) introduced by Tisa Bryant

This is a rare and special opportunity to see some great films shown outdoors. The theme of the series is women travelers, and each film is introduced by a speaker who will talk about travel and self-discovery. From the website –

My Atlas is a summer event series that pairs films with live travelogues to explore the varied experiences of women travelers. Women take to the road for reasons of escape and pleasure, ambition and aimlessness, privileged choice and coercion. Feature films by male and female directors, spanning sixty years of cinema history, will focus on atypical representations of the female traveler in narrative cinema—as divorcees, drug mules, exiles, and drifters. Each film screening will be preceded by a speaker who will recount a specific travel story and/or discuss travel as a mode of self-understanding. 

All films at 7:30PM; $10 (students $7) available on the the website.

My Atlas

July 10: Tisa Bryant & Morvern Caller

July 17: Karolina Waclawiak & I Know Where I’m Going!

July 24: Natasha Singh & Maria Full of Grace

July 31: Andrea Richards & Thelma & Louise

August 7: Dolores Dorante & Stromboli

August 14: Lynell George & Savage Eye

August 22: Vanessa Veselka & Vagabond

Savage Eye (1959)

Savage Eye (1959)