May in the Walker Cinema
Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich: Evading Capture
At the core of Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich’s vibrant and vital body of work over the last decade is a continual drive to center the often-overlooked lives of Black women. Negotiating a line between visibility and opacity, Hunt-Ehrlich’s films balance historical research with poetic form. Through layered and fragmented storytelling, her subjects, who range from artists to groups organizing during the Underground Railroad, serve not just as reflections upon history, but also as lenses through which to understand the present.
Hunt-Ehrlich’s cinema residency at the Walker is inspired by her first feature film, The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire. Described by the artist as a “post-biopic,” the film mirrors the surrealist and decolonial thinking of its titular subject, a writer and anti-colonial activist from Martinique who was a key figure in the 1930s Négritude movement, to make a deconstructed biography.
Building on this, the artist will use her cinema residency to further think through questions on Black women and desire that emanate from her film. The series will also present two screenings in the cinema as historical touchpoints: Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Diva, starring opera singer Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez, and Stig Björkman’s Georgia, Georgia, written by Maya Angelou. A third component of her residency will manifest in the Walker Reader through a series of interviews with artists on the subject of Black women and desire.
Diva by Jean-Jacques Beineix
Friday–Saturday, April 4–5, 7 pm
Walker Cinema
$15 ($12 Walker members, seniors, and students); free for students on Friday
Jules (Frédéric Andréi), a young postman, is obsessed with a diva, the never-recorded African American opera star Cynthia Hawkins (Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez). After bootlegging one of her haunting arias, Jules befriends a teenage record-store thief and finds sanctuary in a Parisian artist’s loft. A cassette tape mix-up precipitates suspenseful entanglements among the moped-riding youth, the artists, the police, and international gangsters in this stylish, chase-filled pop thriller from the director of Betty Blue. 1982, France, 35mm, in French with English subtitles, 117 min.
The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire by Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich
Friday, May 2, 7 pm
Walker Cinema
$15 ($12 Walker members and seniors); free for students
“How does a woman at the center of history disappear from it?” —Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich
Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich’s deconstructed narrative takes as its subject Suzanne Césaire, a writer and anti-colonial activist from Martinique and a key figure in the 1930s Négritude movement. Hunt-Ehrlich’s first feature reflects on the impossibility of biography and Césaire’s belief in surrealism as a tool for decolonial thinking. Like a mobius, actors and crew confront the history of the writer in her youth and restage scenes from her life, bending the conventions of story-making, the fourth wall, and film production. The “post-biopic” experiments with the process of bringing a woman’s “actually lived life” to film, revolving around the relationships among Césaire, her politician husband, and surrealist writer André Breton. 2024, US, DCP, in English and French with English subtitles, 75 min.
Filmmaker, artist, and series curator Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich joins author Rizvana Bradley in conversation following the screening.
Georgia, Georgia by Stig Björkman
Saturday, May 3, 7 pm
Walker Cinema
$15 ($12 Walker members, seniors, and students)
Written and scored by Maya Angelou, Georgia, Georgia is one of the earliest known feature films produced from a Black woman’s screenplay. The story follows pop singer Georgia Martin (Diana Sands) and her inner circle of companions on a tension-filled three-day tour in Sweden. Exhausted by the pressures and publicity, the tragic character sings of love and pain while pursued by a Black Vietnam vet and a white American photographer (Dirk Benedict). 1972, Sweden/U.S., 35mm, 91 min.
Filmmaker, artist, and series curator Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich will introduce the film.
35mm print courtesy Swedish Film Institute.
Forgetting You is Like Breathing Water: Ayanna Dozier in Conversation with Zia Anger
Thursday, May 8, 7 pm
Walker Cinema
$15 ($12 Walker members, seniors, and students)
A heartbroken mistress has a session with her long-term client, who wishes to change their dynamic of bondage play. In this desire to escalate, he miscalculates his own capacity for punishment, forcing the session between the two of them to dig deeper to uncover the root of his problems with grief, love, and heartbreak. 2024, U.S., Digital, English, 23 mins.
Dozier is joined by filmmaker Zia Anger (director, My First Film) for a discussion on autofiction following the screening of Dozier’s recent film Forgetting You is Like Breathing Water.
Accompanying the screening of Forgetting You is Like Breathing Water is a playlist of works. Films by Maya Deren and Kenneth Anger complement Dozier’s trilogy, Close, but no Cigar, in which the artist recreates scenes from 1970s and 1980s sexploitation films and advertisements, countermining the codes produced by their originals.
Ayanna Dozier, lovertits, 2022, 4 min.
Ayanna Dozier, Picture for Parco, 2022, 3 min.
Ayanna Dozier, an exercise in parting, 2022, 3 min.
Maya Deren, Meshes of the Afternoon, 1943, 14 min.
Kenneth Anger, Scorpio Rising, 1963, 28 min.
Major support to preserve, digitize, and present the Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection is generously provided by the Bentson Foundation.
Bitterroot by Vera Brunner-Sung
Friday–Saturday, May 16–17, 7 pm
Walker Cinema
$15 ($12 Walker members and seniors; free for students on Friday)
Bitterroot follows Lue (Twin Cities’ Wa Yang) as he works through the aftermath of a divorce and the life changes that follow. Set in Missoula’s Hmong community and the expansive mountainous landscapes of western Montana, the film’s narrative follows Lue through his janitorial job, helping his aging mother at the local farmer’s market, and to solitary and reflective performances at a local karaoke bar. Bitterroot’s narrative is built with slow and contemplative pacing that touches on themes of migration, climate change, and colonialism to tell a story of transformation and tradition in a Hmong family. 2024, U.S., DCP, in English and Hmong with English subtitles, 85 min.
Hmong Filmmaker Showcase
Thursday, May 22, 7 pm
Walker Cinema
Free
In making the feature film Bitterroot, filmmaker Vera Brunner-Sung and producers Kazua Melissa Vang and Yeej used an apprenticeship model to bring Hmong community into various aspects of production. Though Bitterroot was shot in Missoula, people from the Twin Cities Hmong community were featured both in front of and behind the camera. Curated by Vang and Yeej, this screening showcase features local Hmong artists, highlighting the different ways they are using film to tell their own stories.
This program is part of Free Thursday Nights. Admission is free from 5 to 9 pm, and special programming takes place throughout the museum.
Free Thursday Nights are sponsored by
Education and Public Programs are supported by the Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation and Susan and Rob White.