URe:AD TV (United Re:Public of the African Diaspora Television)

  • 5:24am Pizza Shop Johannesburg
  • Anchor
  • Black Cleveland Publics
  • Black Coffee
  • Carrera
  • Cycles
  • Em Busca de Lélia / In Search
 of Lélia
  • In Dreams
  • Kunyutura
  • Labadee
  • Mela
  • Mensaje Para Escribiente /  Message For a Scribe
  • My Story No Doubt Is Me /
 Older Than Me
  • Negro Hair Petting Zoo
  • Proud Rebels
  • Sitting with a Blind Man Trying to Describe Yellow
  • The Encompassed Wisdom of an Inevitable Manifestation
  • What Are The Blues

Showings

Screening Room - Michigan Theater Sat, Mar 24, 2018 2:45 PM
Film Info
Event Type:Shorts Program
Special Program

Description

URe:AD TV is a transmedia “network” produced through a global open call for media and comprising fresh, contemporary audiovisual work by and for the African diaspora. Challenging the narrow, stereotypical, and banal aspects of both popular media and art-institutional framing of Black representation, URe:AD TV grows and changes with new submissions, producing new work with artists in the cities on its tour. Curated by Shani Peters and Sharita Towne. The United Re:Public of the African Diaspora is a dream manifest in shared yet undefinable likeness. The collective, born of two Black women, now comprises an expansive group of artists, thinkers, and makers. Its vision sets sight toward a future that’s as connective in ideology as it is disparate in aesthetic. Its stylization is intentional, functioning in regard to a Black public, reconciling the way our spirits have persevered through centuries of starting over. The ever-evolving cohort includes practices from the reaches of Zimbabwe, Brazil, and the North American cities of Chicago, Cleveland, Portland, and New York. The concatenated videos, writings, and actions are shades of what is possible when Black is a term divorced from nationality. Blackness is more than a country, intonation, or binary tracing of heritage—it’s the spirit of a cultural joy in spite of a societal insistence otherwise. Black consciousness and Black solidarity are the keys to our survival and prosperity, and URe:AD is a sampling of that, in motion and record. URe:AD is the Black landscape reimagined as any number of worlds existing simultaneously for balance in our cultural ecosystem. Its aesthetics make visible the cultural and political actors that are so often placed at the margins of the shot. URe:AD redefines the margins through the most beautiful strategy: starting a document all its own. In the pages of its publishing and the screens that carry its images, URe:AD supposes that Blackness doesn’t derive its meaning from its proximity to a standard of white. Black is not opposite of, but stands proudly in contrast and balance to. These videos are for us—and “us” is hard to parse with words. URe:AD knows who, and lets its artists and writers explain as much for themselves. These explanations come by way of poetic musings about the stars and both the far and near lands they blanket. The diaspora is a cultural continuum. An ever-evolving consideration of Blackness is its vehicle. And perhaps most importantly, the “republic” is United. – Ashley Stull Meyers

Included Shorts

5:24am Pizza Shop Johannesburg (1min) More
Anchor (5min) More
Black Cleveland Publics (6min) More
Black Coffee (2min) More
Carrera (5min) More
Cycles (5min) More
Em Busca de Lélia / In Search of Lélia (15min) More
In Dreams (2min) More
Kunyutura (1min) More
Labadee (7min) More
Mela (2min) More
Mensaje Para Escribiente / Message For a Scribe (4min) More
My Story No Doubt Is Me / Older Than Me (6min) More
Negro Hair Petting Zoo (1min) More
Proud Rebels (10min) More
Sitting with a Blind Man Trying to Describe Yellow (3min) More
The Encompassed Wisdom of an Inevitable Manifestation (1min) More
What Are The Blues (1min) More

Additional Information

Sponsor: Ann Arbor Distilling Company Education Partner: University of Michigan Department of Afroamerican and African Studies Funded in part by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts