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Black Matters

CONTEMPORARY BLACK VOICES IN CINEMA

FILM PROGRAM AND EVENTS

This spring we are launching a film program dedicated to contemporary black voices in cinema. 

What exactly do we understand by “black culture”? What are the traits that warrant a label that connects South America with Australia, and African traditions with the urban rhythms of American suburbs?

The film program “Black Matters. Contemporary Black Voices in Cinema” offers a selection of three exceptional films that focus on different approaches and artistic voices conveying their own black truth. The program is carried out with financial support from the U.S. Embassy in Latvia.

Screenings will be accompanied by special events that focus on different dimensions of “blackness”, examining the notions of “whiteness” and “blackness”, critical race theory, and gaining insight into the obscure history of “blackness” in Latvia.

The program starts off in March with “On the Count of Three” (2021) by Jerrod Carmichael – a darkly comic drama about two friends who decide to make a suicide pact and spend their last day on Earth tying different loose knots (and nooses).

In April viewers are invited into Martine Sym's sharp-toothed critique of the art world in the comedy “African Desperate", and in May the program will be concluded by the afro-futurist musical "Neptune Frost", which offers a phantasmagorical allegory about the coltan mining industry.

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