Through the Black Lens: Independent Black Cinema Series | Pop’s Art Theater

Pop’s Art Theater and Griot Arts are proud to announce the inaugural year of “Through the Black Lens,” an annual program centering on Black voices in film with support from the NAACP of Rochester. Throughout Black History Month, we will be featuring a collection of independent films by Black filmmakers, including:

WATERMELON WOMAN (Feb 2-8) — 1996, the first film directed by a Black lesbian; about a queen video store worker creating a film about a 1930s black actress.

CANE RIVER (Feb 9-15) — 1982, a pioneering portrayal of diverse Black experiences and its significance in American cinema, considered lost for four decades before its re-discovery and restoration in 2013; a racially charged romance in Louisiana

BLACK GIRL (Feb 16-22) — 1966, regarded as the film that put African cinema on the map; a Senegalese woman works for a wealthy white family in France when their apartment starts to feel like a literal and figurative prison. Considered essential viewing from the 1960s.

DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST (Feb 23-29) — 1991, the first theatrically-distributed film by a Black woman; when a group of sisters returns from NY to their family in the Gullah they begin to see their homelands way of living as backwards.