FREE TO BE ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE

Curated by IFCC Artist in Residence ariella tai, this program borrows its title from a line spoken by Toni Cade Bambara's healer character Minnie Ransom in The Salt Eaters. "FREE TO BE ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE” is inspired by Bambara’s legacy as an activist deeply invested in community work and as an artist whose work was as aesthetically and formally experimental as it was principled. 

This program is organized around questions of how the political, spiritual, communal and ancestral can be taken up in Black experimental filmmaking. These films dream, laugh and listen to the wisdom of the elders with the same attention as they do to that of the youth. They  ask questions about how images can move and shift alongside poetry, music and dance, and consider how healing, liberation and release can be made manifest. "FREE TO BE ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE” shows us visions of Blackness as anything and everything, rooted in this world and in the many possible worlds we can build for ourselves, together.

Participating filmmakers include:

Kalimah Abioto

elijah jamal asani

Zoë Gamell Brown

Syon Davis

Akila Fields

Spencer Garland

Adia Gibbs

Donielle Howard

Tracy Kernell

Sika Stanton

ariella tai

This screening is made possible through the generosity and support of the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center Artist in Residency Program.