Monday | April 29, 2013 7:00 pm

As Above So Below

Screening on Film

Directed by Larry Clark.
With Nathaniel Taylor, Lyvonne Walder, Billy Middleton.
US, 1973, 16mm, color, 52 min.

Larry Clark’s astonishing short feature evokes a Black community in crisis, divided between a narcotizing church that preaches quietism, depicted with savage Brechtian satire that nevertheless evinces a hint of affection, and militant struggle that is both in response to and inspired by U.S. military interventions throughout the Third World. “Like The Spook Who Sat By the Door and Gordon’s War, As Above So Below imagines a post-Watts rebellion state of siege and an organized Black underground plotting revolution. With sound excerpts from the 1968 HUAC report ‘Guerrilla Warfare Advocates in the United States,’ As Above So Below is one of the more politically radical films of the L.A. Rebellion.” – Allyson Nadia Field

PRECEDED BY

Medea

Directed by Ben Caldwell .
US, 1973, digital video, color, 7 min.
Copy source: UCLA

“[Ben] Caldwell invokes Amiri Baraka’s poem ‘Part of the Doctrine’ in this experimental meditation on art history, Black imagery, identity and heritage.” – Allyson Nadia Field

I & I

Directed by Ben Caldwell .
US, 1979, 16mm, color, 32 min.
Print source: UCLA

“Drawing from Ayi Kwei Armah’s novel Two Thousand Seasons, Caldwell meditates on reciprocity and on the concept of ‘I and I’ which postulates no division between people, whereas the splitting of ‘you’ from ‘I’ is an invention of the devil designed to brew trouble in the world.” – Allyson Nadia Field

Preservation funded in part by a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation

Ujamii Uhuru Schule

Directed by Don Amis .
US, 1974, digital video, color, 9 min.
Copy source: UCLA

The title is Swahili for “Community Freedom School” and the name of the Afrocentric primary school in South Los Angeles depicted in this short documentary.