The Black Aesthetic is an Oakland-based creative organization and curatorial series that showcases rare, unknown, and influential films highlighting the creativity and generative imagination of black filmmakers. Black Aesthetic organizers Leila Weefur, Ryanaustin Dennis, Jamal Batts, Malika "Ra" Imhotep, and Zoé Samudzi invite you to a screening of Christian Johnson’s short film A Moment of Truth + Sin, a psychological thriller about a black man who is tormented with thoughts of self-harm and marital aggression toward his white wife. A panel discussion will follow.

Born in Oakland, California, Christian Johnson is a writer, image maker, and film curator. His work aims to create multilayered revolutionary images of the black body in motion. Earlier this year he finished an artist residency at E.M. Wolfman, and in April he opened for an evening with Yrsa Daly Ward hosted by Matatu.

Leila Weefur lives and works in Oakland. She uses video and works on paper to investigate how an individual is impacted by the shifting boundaries of language and how these shifting cultural boundaries can create an environment where identities are formed. Weefur received an MFA from Mills College in 2016 and is a recipient of the Hung Liu award and the artist fellowship at Kala Art Institute. She has exhibited her work in local and national galleries including Southern Exposure and SOMArts Gallery in San Francisco, Betti Ono in Oakland, and Smack Mellon in Brooklyn.

Born in Oakland, Ryanaustin Dennis is a writer, curator, and artist. His art practice combines collage, poetry, and performance. His main concern is the metaphysics of blackness: the philosophical practice of uncovering the being, property, possibility, and causality of blackness through a look at our historical cultural notions.