rupture//rapture
Dr. de Jesús developed the rupture//rapture film programme during her 2021 residency at Concordia University’s Visual Collections Repository. This work helped activate the institution’s teaching and research film collection.
De Jesús created short video introductions for each film programme to support online screenings during the pandemic. The videos are listed below.
rupture//rapture brings together a bold selection of thought-provoking films that explore how Black girls and women transform marginality into sites of radical creativity, possibility, resistance and collective strength. Spanning narrative cinema, documentary, and hybrid forms, these works reveal the margin not as a place of lack but as a generative terrain where new ways of seeing and new forms of power can flourish. Audiences are invited to engage with storytellers who reimagine the world and refuse erasure, and to reflect on how the experience of marginality can be transformative.
The screening series is organized into four themed programmes, each viewing the margin as a “space of radical openness” through a unique perspective, as described by bell hooks.
Program 01: never look a hot comb in the teeth
Theme(s) - Resolution with the self; feeling othered by difference; regaining agency by embracing difference; confronting anti-blackness
Nancy’s Workshop (Äicha Diop, 2019): In Nancy’s Workshop, Montreal stylist Nancy Falaise transforms young Black girls’ struggles with anti-black beauty standards by teaching them how to care for and embrace their natural hair textures.
Mahalia Melts in the Rain (Emilie Mannering, 2018): A young Black ballerina (Kaiyonni Banton-Renner) has her hair straightened for a dance school photoshoot after the girl’s mother sees white classmates critiquing the girl’s hair. The film explores themes of belonging, self-image, and the challenges of navigating Eurocentric beauty ideals.
PICK (Alicia K. Harris, 2019): PICK is a narrative short film offering an unflinching look at the microaggressions that a young Black girl experiences when she wears an afro to school on picture day.
Program 03: black time
Theme(s) - intimacy; ritual; Afro-Caribbean spiritualities; home; sexuality; temporality
Cycles (Zeinabu irene Davis, 1989): The short experimental film Cycles by Zeinabu irene Davis is a stirring exploration of time, spirituality, and Black female subjectivity, and is structured through its protagonist’s anticipation of her delayed period.
Black Mother (Khalik Allah, 2018): Divided into three “acts,” Black Mother is an abstract documentary that uses various audiovisual formats to consider the relations between Jamaica’s colonial history and spirituality, the filmmaker’s connection to the island, as well as a range of Black women’s experiences.
Curatorial Statement
It is often said that film curation is a deeply personal endeavor. I believe this statement about curatorial practice is true, but maybe not for the usual reasons that one might think. One standard way of thinking about film curation in relation to the personal is that this creative work is developed from an individual’s vision, particular set of interests, expertise, and research.
But for those of us who are from marginalized groups, there is another dimension to “personal” film curation that involves one’s sense of connectedness to a larger community and its practices of looking, being, and knowing.
Program 02: Speaking from the margins. Speaking in resistance.
Theme(s) - women’s political solidarity; women’s work
I Am Somebody (Madeline Anderson, 1969): I Am Somebody documents the political struggle of Black women medical staff in Charleston, South Carolina in their efforts to gain pay equity and union recognition, including their powerful challenge to state and federal military forces.
Sambizanga (Sarah Maldoror, 1972): Sambizanga is adapted from The Real Life of Domingos Xavier, a short story about an imprisoned revolutionary’s experiences of state violence during the Angolan War of Independence. The film concentrates on the experiences of Maria, Domingos’s wife, and the important role that women played during the revolution.
Program 04: we too, are queer
Theme(s) - tenderness; self-care; lyrical meditations and recognition of queer Black women’s self-possession
Time Will Come (Natalie Wood, 2018): Using movement and repetition, Natalie Wood’s experimental video invites the viewer into a poetic meditation on the ways in which intimacy and love between Black women counteract racialized experiences of homophobia and sexism.
Long Time Comin’ (Dionne Brand, 1993): Long Time Comin’ weaves dance, visual art, and musical performances throughout its exploration of the artistic and social justice interventions of two queer Black Canadian women.