Studio Screen | Black Audio Film Collective Double Feature at Maysles Cinema

Interweaving archival materials, compelling interviews and dramatic reenactments, Seven Songs for Malcolm X (1993; 52 min) and The Last Angel of History (1996; 45 min) are two genre-redefining films by the influential Black Film Audio Collective, a group of seven Black British filmmakers and multimedia artists interested in post-colonial investigations of Black culture and identity. This double feature screening at Maysles Cinema will be followed by a talkback session addressing the Collective’s legacy of Black experimental film (speakers to be announced at a later date). 

An homage to the inspirational African-American civil rights leader, Seven Songs for Malcolm X collects testimonies, eyewitness accounts, and dramatizations to tell the life, legacy, loves, and losses of Malcolm X. Expanding on the Collective’s signature experimental blend, The Last Angel of History is part-sci-fi parable, part-essay film, which serves as an essential primer on the aesthetics and dynamics of contemporary Afrofuturism. Interviews with esteemed musicians, writers, and cultural critics are interwoven with the fictional story of the "data thief" who must travel through time and space in search of the code that holds the key to his future.

This Studio Screen event is the second installment of our annual Studio Screen partnership with Maysles Cinema. Now in its second year, this collaborative film series highlights how film and contemporary art practices intersect and address the on- and off-screen legacies of under-represented cultural producers. This year's selection of films explores the boundary between documentary and narrative filmmaking, and is thematically inspired by The Studio Museum in Harlem's exhibition, Fictions—a survey of recent work by nineteen emerging artists working to imagine and reimagine history and identity through visual practice.

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This partnership series is presented as part of inHarlem, a Museum initiative encompassing a growing range of dynamic exhibitions and programs designed to explore innovative ways to engage the community beyond the Museum's walls. inHarlem programming is made possible thanks to support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation; William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust; Rockefeller Brothers Fund; National Endowment for the Arts, and the Marcus Garvey Park Alliance with funding provided by the Harlem Community Development Corporation. Additional support is provided by The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and the New York City Council.