| BLACK HARVEST SHORT FILM PROGRAM |
2025–2026, France, USA, Brazil, 76 min.
In Various languages with English subtitles | Format: Digital
November 12 | ANCESTRAL FUTURES traces a lineage of Black speculative cinema that reaches backward as much as it imagines forward. Rooted in ritual, folklore, spirituality, mythology, and cosmology, these films reject the notion that the future exists apart from the past. Instead, they position ancestral knowledge as a living technology capable of preserving cultural memory, sustaining communities, and imagining liberated futures. Through mythic storytelling, sacred practice, and ceremonial imagination, the program affirms that Black speculative traditions have always been sites of innovation, resistance, transformation, and world-building.
PROGRAM
CAFÉ ?
2025, dir. Bamar Kane, France, 25 min., In French with English subtitles / Format: Digital
A diasporic meditation on memory, ritual, and human connection.
ANANSE AND THE DIVINE JOURNEY
2026, dir. Bathschèba Duronvil, USA, 11 min., In English and Twi with English subtitles / Format: Digital
Ananse the trickster seeks out elemental gods to restore peace to a troubled earth.
THE MEMORY OF MOTHER CLEO
2026, dirs. Márcio Ferreira, Rafa Beck, Brazil, 17 min., In Portuguese with English subtitles / Format: Digital
An axé family keeps a fading elder’s spiritual legacy and cultural memory alive.
ORÍKÌ OSHUN
2025, dir. Elena Herminia Guzman, USA, 15 min., In English, Yoruba, Spanish, and Portuguese / Format: Digital
Sacred drumming and ritual invoke the divine spirit of Oshun in an experimental visual praise poem.
MAKTOOB
2026, dir. Thoraia Hussein, USA, 8 min., In English / Format: Digital
A late-night medical shift takes a surreal turn when a mysterious glowing presence follows a doctor home.
The Film Center is ADA accessible. This presentation will be projected without open captions. The theater is hearing-loop equipped. For accessibility requests, please email filmcenter@saic.edu
SHOWTIMES
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 6:00 P.M.
