The American Cinematheque announced the launch of a year-long programming series titled “Perpetratin’ Realism: 1990s Black Film”, which will celebrate and reflect on Black Realism films from the 1990s. The series will kick-off with a red carpet and special screening of “New Jack City” (1991) at the Regency Westwood Village Theatre on Saturday, April 9th, followed by a Q&A with Director Mario Van Peebles.
“New Jack City” was released on March 8, 1991, just four days after news outlets released the video of LAPD officers beating Rodney King, which fanned racial tensions in Los Angeles and on a national scale. Westwood’s Mann Theatre overbooked screens showing the film during opening night, turning away many Black audiences. This sparked a wave of protests in the area causing police intervention and the theater consequently pulled the film off screens. The event will mark Peebles’ return to the theater after 30 years to participate in a landmark screening to reclaim the space and the power of the film.
“New Jack City’ getting shut down in Westwood in 1991 is indicative of a confluence of violence against Black people on-screen and off-screen in real life. This is a legacy of film and television that actively continues to haunt us today,” said series co-curator Roya Rastegar. “We often talk about the power of film to represent marginalized communities. But the burden to ‘be real’ and authentically represent one’s community can be a trap for BIPOC filmmakers. This program reflects on and honors films from the 1990s that blunted the force of representational and respectability politics and played with the idea of what’s ‘real.’”
Over the next year, The American Cinematheque will host “Perpetratin’ Realism” to explore the new wave of films in the 1990s by Black filmmakers. Dubbed by scholar and critic Manthia Diawara, “new Black realism” films featured dynamic portrayals of Black people grappling with the hierarchies of power and the living legacies of white racism, gun violence, and illicit economies.
The series will screen one film each month at various theaters throughout Los Angeles and will feature appearances and conversations with special guests that include directors, producers, writers and cast members from each of the films. The program represents the organization’s larger collaboration with curators, scholars, artists and filmmakers, and is accompanied with a curriculum designed for higher education, featuring panels that include “Fear of a Black Audience” and “The Ratchet and the Real”. Currently programmed films include “Clockers” directed by Spike Lee, “Menace II Society” directed by The Hughes Brothers, “Set It Off” directed by F. Gary Gray, “I Like It Like That” directed by Darnell Martin and “House Party” directed by Reginald Hudlin.
“’New Jack City’ is the inaugural film for the “Perpetratin’ Realism” program because it stirs up questions about the complex meaning of Black realism in the 1990s context of performative multiculturalism and increasing state violence,” said series co-curator Felice Blake, who was attending UCLA at the time of the protests surrounding the release of the film. “These films attracted Black audiences to movie theaters, sparking panic amongst white neighborhood and business owners. These same Black audiences became the target of police surveillance and repression.”
At the event, The American Cinematheque will debut a special curated program poster created by multidisciplinary artist Adrian Armstrong, whose work touches on topics such as depression within the Black community, systematic oppression, and identity erasure; but on the other side of the spectrum explores nostalgia, growth, and success.
“As the entire field of film and viewership radically changes, I’m thrilled to reimagine the future of culture and change in the cinema community,” said American Cinematheque Board Member Stephanie Allain.
Perpetratin Realism is made possible by a grant from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) and is co-curated by The University of California Santa Barbara English Department Associate Professor and author Felice Blake, Ph.D., and scholar, curator and award-winning filmmaker Roya Rastegar, Ph.D., and The University of California Riverside English and Media and Cultural Studies Associate Professor Keith M. Harris, Ph.D., in collaboration with The American Cinematheque.
“I’m excited to collaborate with a powerhouse of thought-leaders, scholars, curators and filmmakers that will build upon The American Cinematheque’s rich history of using film as a tool to spark meaningful conversation and change,” said Ken Scherer, Executive Director of The American Cinematheque. “We will continue to listen, learn and grow as a cultural organization that values diverse voices in film.”
Tickets are on sale now for the “New Jack City” special screening event and can be purchased at https://www.americancinematheque.com/now-showing/new-jack-city-4-9-22/.
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