The Clark Art Institute screens two films in its L.A. Rebellion Second Generation film series, Dreams Are Colder Than Death (2014) and As Told To G/D Thyself (2019). Both free events take place in the Clark’s auditorium, located in the Manton Research Center.

Feb. 22: Dreams are Colder than Death
Boundary-destroying in his approach to reframing film vocabulary, Arthur Jafa was taught by Haile Gerima at Howard University. In 2014, he made Dreams Are Colder Than Death, an essay film on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. In his experimental use of imagery of Black life, Jafa doesn’t merely document but interrogates the realities of African American lives today.

Feb. 29: As Told to G/D Thyself
Filmmakers like Jenn Nkiru and Bradford Young, who went to Howard University and were taught by Haile Gerima and other first-generation L.A. Rebellion filmmakers, have teamed up with a wide variety of other filmmakers and musicians to create an avant-garde that is pushing the edge of film, music, design, advertising, and art. This assortment of shorts showcases the breadth of this work and its inherent multimedia approach (for example, the prevalence of music videos). Theirs is a practice for today, a world where recorded audio and video shoots across the sky to countless small screens around the world.