Four Women
(Julie Dash, U.S., 1975) New Print!

Set to Nina Simone's stirring ballad of the same name, Dash's dance film features Linda Martina Young as strong “Aunt Sarah,” tragic mulatto “Saffronia,” sensuous “Sweet Thing,” and militant “Peaches.” Kinetic camerawork and editing, richly colored lighting, and meticulous costume, makeup, and hair design work together with Young's sensitive performance to look at longstanding black female stereotypes from oblique, critical angles. Jacqueline Stewart (7 mins, Color, 16mm)

Black Art, Black Artists
(Elyseo J. Taylor, U.S., 1971)

As the only black faculty member in UCLA's film school, Elyseo Taylor was an influential teacher and advocate for students of color. In voiceover dialogue with woodcut printmaker Van Slater, Taylor's film examines the status of contemporary black artists. This visual survey of black art since the nineteenth century, punctuated with jazz and blues selections, outlines pressures to prove artistic capability, to suit white and middle-class black tastes, and to make explicit political statements. Jacqueline Stewart (16 mins, Color, DigiBeta transfer from 16mm)

Define
(O. Funmilayo Makarah, U.S., 1988)

Oblique, episodic meditations on the semiotics and ethics of ethnic female identity are accompanied by a blandly cynical narrator explaining how to “win an invitation to the dominant culture.” Kevin McMahon (5 mins, Color, DigiBeta)

Bellydancing-A History & An Art
(Alicia Dhanifu, U.S., 1979)

Dhanifu, who appears in director Jamaa Fanaka's Emma Mae, constructs a rigorous and beautifully rendered history of belly dancing-its roots and history, forms and meanings. The filmmaker performs this art as well, alone and with other dancers. Shannon Kelley (22 mins, Color, DigiBeta)

Festival of Mask
(Don Amis, U.S., 1982)

Amis was one of the very few black student filmmakers at UCLA (including Carroll Parrott Blue and Denise Bean) working in a documentary mode. In this film, preparations for and performances at the Craft and Folk Art Museum's annual Festival of Mask illustrate L.A.'s diverse racial and ethnic communities (African, Asian, Latin American) expressing themselves through a shared traditional form. Jacqueline Stewart (25 mins, Color, DigiBeta transfer from 16mm)

Total running time: 75 mins