Fireplace Music Film Festival: The Last Angel of History / A Surprise Film Collage

CAMPUS COMMUNITY ONLY | Join us for three nights of groundbreaking music films screened in the DCB Fireplace Room. Bennington College students, faculty and staff are exclusively invited to join this event in person. The festival will conclude Thursday evening with an open Live-Soundtrack Improvisation Session to a surprise film collage. Voices as well as acoustic and electronic instruments of any kind are welcome!

6:00 pm, The Last Angel of History, 45 minutes

This cinematic essay posits science fiction (with tropes such as alien abduction, estrangement, and genetic engineering) as a metaphor for the Pan-African experience of forced displacement, cultural alienation, and otherness. John Akomfrah's analysis is rooted in an exploration of the cultural works of Pan-African artists, such as funkmaster George Clinton and his Mothership Connection, Sun Ra's use of extraterrestrial iconography, and the very explicit connection drawn between these issues in the writings of black science fiction authors Samuel R. Delaney and Octavia Butler.

7:00 pm, A Surprise Film Collage

Join the open LIVE-SOUNDTRACK IMPROVISATION SESSION. All instruments / objects / voices (acoustic, electronic, electromagnetic) of any kind are welcome!