Watah's Reel Talks Monthly Film Series

 

Watah's Reel Talks is a monthly film series exploring our collective humanity and current state of existence on the planet. Films explore race, class, gender, the environment, spirituality, colonization, corporatization, globalization, art and the meeting place of all these. Monthly screenings include group discussions among Artists-In-Residence at Watah and the community in attendance. Come by The Watah Theatre once a month on a Wednesday and enjoy popcorn and people! See Calendar for monthly upcoming Reel Talks dates.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Film: Daughters of the Dust by Julie Dash

We begin with our screenings with Daughters of the Dust by Julie Dash Julie Dash is a filmmaker, music video and commercial director, author and website creator. Her film studies began in Harlem in 1969, but eventually led her to the American Film Institute and UCLA, where she made The Diary of an African Nun (1977), based on a short story by Alice Walker, which won a student award from the Directors Guild of America. Dash’s critically acclaimed short film Illusions (1982) later won the Jury Prize for Best Film of the Decade awarded by the Black Filmmakers Foundation. Dash’s first feature — Daughters of the Dust (1991) — was the first film by an African American woman to receive a general theatrical release in the United States; the Library of Congress named it to the National Film Registry in 2004. Dash returned to the film’s characters and their Gullah milieu in her novel of the same title, published in 1999. When not working on her projects, Dash is a frequent lecturer at many leading universities, including Stanford University, Princeton, Harvard and Yale.

 

Film: Upon Westminister Bridge by Anthony Wall

As the inspiration for our upcoming Mikey Smith Raw Work Festival, we close the evening with Upon Westminster Bridge by director and filmmaker Anthony Aall, honouring Jamaica’s inspirational Michael (Mikey) Smith. Mikey Smith was a politically ferocious dub poet, born in a rough section of Kingston. Smith grew up in a reggae culture immersed in the toasting riddims of I-Roy and U-Roy, the heavy dub that Lee Perry and King Tubby were churning out, and the political stance of Bob Marley. Smith, who began his career as a poet, raged against a Jamaican political machine (be it left or right wing) that seemed to fail the majority of its people.