L.A. REBELLION
From the myriad of cinematic movements of the 20th century, the L.A. Rebellion - also known as Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers - is certainly one of the most revolutionary currents. Between the 60s and 80s, a generation of filmmakers, associated with UCLA - University of California, created a new Black Cinema, independent from the stereotypical Hollywood conventions and attentive to the real african-american lived experiences. At the time of the Civil Rights movement in the USA, these filmmakers’ contributions challenged the white hegemony in the cinema industry, while expanding the aesthetic and social reach of cinema to circumstances overlooked until that time.
In the most comprehensive European retrospective of the movement to date, LEFFEST celebrates the irreverent qualities of the L.A. Rebellion’s filmography. Directors such as Charles Burnett, Billy Woodberry, Ben Caldwell, Julie Dash and Haile Gerima - special guests of this year’s festival - compose a landscape of dozens of filmmakers, with scenes as remarkable as the painfully stilted dance of a married couple in Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1978), the visionary intergenerational tour-de-force in Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991) and the mythical singular-cut confluence of past and present in Gerima’s Sankofa (1993).
Featuring screenings by fourteen distinct L.A. Rebellion directors, unprecedented in Portugal, LEFFEST 2022 will hold further debates with the invited filmmakers and a retrospective-exhibition about this movement’s generation. With the artistic perspective and work by the emblematic Ben Caldwell, the exhibition’s vernissage will be held on the 13th of November, at MU.SA in Sintra.
Full program here.
