Bill Gunn's GANJA & HESS (1973) Screening + Film Historian Presentations!

Flirting with the conventions of blaxploitation and horror, Bill Gunn’s revolutionary independent film GANJA & HESS is a highly stylized and utterly original treatise on sex, religion, and African American identity. Duane Jones (Night of the Living Dead) stars as anthropologist Hess Green, who is stabbed with an ancient ceremonial dagger by his unstable assistant (director Bill Gunn), bestowing upon him the blessing of immortality... and the curse of an unquenchable thirst for blood. When the assistant’s beautiful and outspoken wife Ganja (Marlene Clark) comes searching for her missing husband, she and Hess form an unexpected partnership. Together, they explore just how much power blood holds.

Later recut and released in an inferior version, this edition represents the original release, restored by The Museum of Modern Art with support from The Film Foundation, and mastered in HD from a 35mm negative.

This very special screening will be preceded first by a pre-recorded introduction by Maya S. Cade, creator and curator of Black Film Archive and a scholar-in-residence at the Library of Congress, followed by a special live 30 min. illustrated introduction by film historian and author Steve Ryfle (Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa; Japan’s Favorite Mon-Star: The Unauthorized Biography of “The Big G”).

Our enormous thanks to George Schmalz and Kino Lorber for providing this special screening free of charge in the month of October.

ABOUT MAYA S. CADE

Maya S. Cade is the creator and curator of Black Film Archive and a scholar-in-residence at the Library of Congress. She has been awarded special distinctions by the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics for the Archive. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, NPR, The Paris Review, Vulture, among other publications. She is the fall 2022 programmer in residence at Indiana University’s Cinema and was the fall 2021 research fellow at Indiana University's Black Film Center & Archive. Originally hailing from New Orleans, Maya is based in Los Angeles.

ABOUT STEVE RYFLE

Steve Ryfle is an author, journalist, and documentary film producer. He has written about film, books, and culture for the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Criterion Current, Cineaste, Virginia Quarterly Review, In These Times, Bright Lights Film Journal, Turner Classic Movies, Zyzzyva, POV, Time Out New York, and other publications.

Please email [email protected] or phone 323-663-2167 with any questions.

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Host or Publisher The Philosophical Research Society