Science Fiction Against the Margins: Afrofuturism | Cauleen Smith

thank you for coming welcome to the Billy Wilder theater home of public programs for the UCLA film and television archive I am mayom haaz director of the UCLA film and television archive thank you for joining us for the opening night of the archives 12 Night series science fiction against the margins part of PST art art and science Collide presented by the Getty all of the archive screening in the Wilder are free thanks to a gift from an anonymous donor and we're grateful to them for their support and the hammer Museum's partnership the archive would also like to thank all of our Community Partners on tonight's screening Sundance Institute UCLA International Institute UCLA Alumni Association and the UCLA school of the arts and architecture science fiction against the margins received outstanding support from the Gettys PST art initiative a four-year Grant project that combines research and exhibition this year's initiative um Art and Science Collide features work made by more than 800 artists representing by over 70 institutions across Southern California that explore the connection and possibility between the Arts and Sciences this PST UCL has been awarded the most grants to any one institution including exhibitions here at the Hammer Museum also the Fowler Museum the UCLA art size Center and the UCLA Arts conditional Studio the archives previous PST projects have included the LA Rebellion exhibition as part of Art in LA and rerto in espanol Latin America Cinema in Los Angeles as part of PST La in 2017 we are thrilled to be part of Art and Science Collide sfam as we have been affectionately calling it for the last few years is a special collaboration between the archive and the UCLA School of theater film and television and creating not only this series but also producing an anthology of original scholarship by UCLA faculty and related course offerings in 2019 Professor Chon Nora pitched the idea of sfam to the archive staff and four years later we are here today a project like science fiction against the margins requires lots of thanks so I want to thank our colleagues past and present from the school of theater film and television Dean Brian kite Professor Amy uao chair of the Department of film television and digital media and the faculty contributors to the Anthology which we'll hear more about in a moment I'd like to thank the generous PST Getty team especially Heather McDonald Melissa low lose Briggs and Zachary Kaplan as well as the Director of the Getty Foundation Joan Weinstein the archive is part of UCLA library and our Collective efforts creatively and Technical expertise are reflected in the many outstanding individuals listed in the catalog that you have hopefully in your hand I want to thank all of the teams who help make our programming possible including the teams in Communications and marketing our digital lab collection Services programming the business office theater staff and of course our fearless leader the Norman and our Powell University librarian Athena and Jackson who I think is here hi let's give all of them a round of [Applause] applause now I have the pleasure to introduce the curatorial team ton Rea Nicole usedto and Maya mon smuckler to talk more about the project I was wondering where my uh catalog went and I realized that may took it um good evening and Welcome to our opening this is so exciting we have worked on this so long we began the kind of sit down uh work with this at the beginning of the pandemic um and that really kind of changed a lot of our um worldview and and really put an emphasis on the importance of media uh the science fiction against the margins uh started as a way of trying to look at another kind of Cinema we're very familiar with the Hollywood style science fiction that's used not just in Hollywood but around the world in which there is a a good and a bad and there's the resolution of that in very melodramatic terms that ultimately go down to not the structures within which conflict emerges but the individuals mostly in many cases the family we didn't want to challenge that it exist and to try to replace it only reasserts a new center and so we decided to turn in the other direction and push back against margins and to not put forth a a central vision of a certain type of Cinema but to allow the diversity of film making happening around the world whether supported by a nation state or independent uh art-based movement-based indigenous uh collaborative uh International Productions you'll see all of those uh in the course of uh of this series now going along with the series is an anthology of original as well as republished scholarship ship when I say republish that sounds um kind of like recycling in in the negative sense um we are actually uh publishing the articles that sustained us that helped Focus us uh that Maya and I used when we taught a graduate class as a way of testing out the idea with some of our students um so the the important thing about this book is it's not a mere Reflection by Scholars of this series we think of the book and the film series as more of a binary star and that's two stars that are circling around each other the series does the work it can do in a space like this and we hope that you really U you enjoy that and that it uh stimulates you in terms of what is possible through Cinema and relative to science uh and art and the book is more of a critical reflection uh that is really at its core uh the work that the faculty that we worked with in cinema media studies um having followed what we were doing and being part of that on the curatorial side helped identify where the scholarship needed to go and we're really excited to bring that work forth and to put it alongside the work that we all found um very Illuminating in terms of different ways of thinking about Cinema some of some films for example were sh L uh been written about a long time but it's only recently that the role of violence and colonialism is being drawn out of that uh film uh I want to end by thanking our contributors who are um faculty in or affiliated with Cinema and media studies including some professors from information studies and professor and theater and if you could just raise your hands here I think many of you are here just a big a big round of applause come on Chris raise your hand [Applause] and with that I'd like to turn it over to Nicole hi everyone wow I really can't believe we're here today um I wasn't part of the archive before this project so I really want to thank Maya and Paul and Chan for bringing me on and it's been such a wild Journey which I think you'll see in these 12 programs so addition in addition to the contrib contributions by The Faculty collaborators we would like to thank the series contributing programmers Paul Malcolm who is here tonight as well the archive senior public programmer and mark quickley the archives John H Mitchell television curator who has programmed an amazing night of Afro futurist television episodes and music films including performances by A Tribe Called Quest and gcan Heron you do not want to miss that it's on October 27th yes uh additional thanks to KJ Ralph Miller and Amanda Salazar for their contributions to the program over these past four years and I think they're also here tonight so we could clap for them it was important to the project to include more than only feature films incorporating short films and television allowed us to explore the work of even more filmmakers who are experimenting with moving image and the genre conventions of sci-fi these short films are in many ways the pillars of their programs tomorrow night we screen wama Bama short film afon alongside the earliest example of a science fiction film George M a trip to the moon the screen before the feature film the science of fictions on November 15 in our singest believing program we screened four very varied experimental films including stranger baby fever dream to infinity and beyond and tribulation 99 and the screen before Korean action sci-fi feature film save the Green Planet it's going to be a really wild night and these are just a few of the short films we're including in the series so with that I'll pass it to [Applause] echoing Chan and Nicole it's been an incredible four years um starting with the pandemic and watching so many science fiction films that in so many ways mirrored what we were experiencing for real so um I really feel grateful that we had this project to sort of ground US during a really um incredible extraordinary time so thank you all for being here tonight to uh share with us our opening of Science Fiction against the margins which is uh 12 nights of programming starting of course this weekend running through December 14th we are fortunate over the course of the series to be joined in conversation by many filmmakers whose films we're showing um who will be talking about their work in the context of Science Fiction so just to highlight some of those um of course tonight's guest um artist in UCLA Professor Colleen Smith who will be joined in conversation with uh professor green who is also one of our contributors to our Anthology on October 18th um we have the Restoration World premiere of Sticky Fingers of time and a Q&A with filmmaker Hillary Broger and an intro by Jillian borders who's our head of preservation who will talk a little bit about that preservation project on October 19th um uh AI mama and Neptune Frost um will be joined by the filmmakers um Saul Williams Ania uz Yan and um Asaka Lynn on November 3 uh we're having a triple feature two features um advantageous with filmmaker Jennifer Fang sleep dealer with um Alex Rivera and robots of Brixton introduced by ke uh kway Tavarez and then um our special uh one of our other contributing um authors Kathleen McHugh who is here yes um we'll be doing a Q&A on November 22nd with filmmaker danise goulette and her film night Raiders and then our series will close on December 14th with an evening with filmmaker uh Lissa sansor so please check out the calendar which is on our website grab a program grab a postcard um we really hope to see you at more of our screenings and thank you so much for joining us tonight um just a note uh we're showing the shorts first I will then quickly introduce our um guests then we'll have a 10 minute break and then invite you to come back for the Q&A and then to round off the evening with space is the place the break will be after the clearly okay here you do it because I'm not part of programming so I get this okay Maya's gonna come back introduce Colleen and shelene then they'll have a conversation on stage we'll have a 10-minute intermission and then we'll end of spaces the place that that's part it's a short okay it's long four years thank you yeah enjoy first of all thank you Maya for the introduction and everyone for joining us tonight uh the opening night of Science Fiction against the margins and of course Colleen thank you so much for joining us I know that you travel to uh join uh for the Q&A and um I'm very excited to have the conversation especially starting our program with hello and I guess uh I wanted to start with U maybe a conversation about hello and how it fits into I guess afro futurism as a kind of way of thinking about uh cultural production black cultural production that engages questions of Futurity of uh Liberation um but you know very much of the present uh talking about present conditions through the imaginary um that film came about because I was actually asked to I was commissioned to make a procession in New Orleans so it was actually the the commission's um interests and intentions had more to do with a kind of um ongoing kind of a cultural practice of processions Marty Gro things like that Carnival and the Caribbean and I I'm thinking of New Orleans as the Caribbean which which it is in many in many respects um but um when I got there I just like that's just a ridiculous thing for some a kid who grew up in the suburbs of Sacramento to do is to like go to New Orleans and like try and do what they're already doing at this like incredibly sophisticated level um and um every time I go to New Orleans I I would try to connect with kalamu Yas Salam who is an amazing writer and thinker um and wrote some of my favorite short stories but like science fiction short stories um so um I I thought there I I think there's something significant about the fact that these really really um Innovative short stories written in the middle of the 20th century came out of a thinker from New Orleans not not necessarily New York or like as the as the the film sort of centers everything in sort of um you know New York Detroit like that but um um the the the South New Orleans in particular contributes a great deal to Birmingham Alabama is where Sun raw is from um you know what I mean so this idea of like um where where would where would black people be thinking about Futurity um in in the most urgent and desperate way of course it would come from from this region and I think you know okay that's a long-winded setup to say then I I just didn't want to do that procession but I I did want to move through the city history like the history in New Orleans is multi-layered like deep deep in the cament and in in the the concrete and in the trees growing you know it's everywhere it's in the air so I wanted to move through the city to to sort of Mark that and Mark um sites where black music in particular is very indebted to um um New Orleans um at different stages in time from like um like a a tube of funk beat to um like a a a particular kind of trumpet Trill to a lion's roar or an elephant stomp so all of those things are what we're thinking about so I don't know if I answered your question but I think that like this idea of Futurity really naturally comes out of um places that have deep deep history right right and particularly I mean this film was made in 2014 um but it also is uh sort of marking you know the the cat catastrophe um of hurricane Cuna so it's a a post Hurricane Katrina uh film and uh I was wondering if you could talk about that in in relation to afrofuturism um and uh this question of you know these sort of uh maybe postapocalyptic Landscapes the question of alienation that I think you know comes through in hello in many ways no yeah thanks for asking that because that was what I was I me I was trying to get there which is the arrival at um um Close Encounters of the Third Kind as the kind of musical thread that wo all the sites together came out of returning I'd been in New Orleans in 2007 which was just two years after the waters that was truly apocalyptic and then um um seven years later uh I couldn't figure out where I was as the city actually had recovered but in a particular way that I found really alarming like I thought I would be able to reassemble my crew um who are all like people who um uh had moved back to New Orleans very urgently they're from the Lower Ninth and um and um but they they're like it's too EXP expensive so they didn't even live in their own City anymore um I I was like walking down a street a little bit lost I found a cafe and then I was sitting there for half an hour before I realized I'd been there before but it was a totally different place I was and I couldn't find um even kalamu who I normally would like go see right away he he I had to drive like an hour outside of town to go see him he wasn't living there anymore too expensive um and then when I was casually talking with people um um everyone was kind of talking about how they were made to feel like aliens in their own City by all of these really well-intentioned newcomers who were coming to rebuild and refurb and take advantage of cheap real estate you know um so um they they were and one uh I remember um someone literally said you know you can't even really say hello because people jump it's like and it it's my neighborhood like they're in my neighborhood like you know what I mean um so that's where this idea of um Close Encounters came from it's one of it's really the only Spielberg film I can watch I think it's his best film and um and um and um the the the the core of this film um really classic science fiction Trope is that there are these aliens who keep kind of like swooping in and um going Bo and they're literally literally saying hello in through math and sound right um and the humans being what we are uh think this is like an incursion an aggressive incursion and they gear up for war they're really like really really ready for war um until like the mothership drops and then very deliberately carefully artfully teaches them math and it says this is we're like this this sound is this letter you simple little bug like you know what I mean so like um and I thought that's kind of the way black um black citizens in New Orleans are um having to operate like in this like with the enormous patience and gravitas for people who think that they already know what's going on you know oh that's incredible and I like I had sent you an earlier message talking about avangard jazz music and you know you have like these wonderful pieces that are dealing with jazz music particularly of course with sunra I'm thinking of the work you did in Chicago um another Urban space in which you had the marching band and and uh sort of the refrain of space is the place but I want to really talk about maybe music in this because uh you sort of use John Williams refrain but then there's a kind of improvisation right um that is I think also kind of Technology right that you know I think brings a sort of um a sort of Science Fiction to this in terms of the ways in which it becomes a mode of riffing communication and you know just talking about being in in in a place right yeah and processing really so um um the uh music director who rounded up all of these incredible truly incredible some of which whom are legends um they musicians um for me um was the one who translated this like said oh this director wants you to play these five notes and then I got all these phone calls coming at me so okay so G gfcc okay so okay so why okay you know what I mean like these really interesting questions about like what they could do with it and I was like I want you to those are five notes in a sequence um and um I'm hoping you can do something with it and they're like oh okay so basically this idea of processing almost like algorithmically each individual U musician working with the same material but um um finding out like really really instantly I mean they all said to me oh yeah I I started just like finding these intervals and then I found myself writing a song like I found like like several of them were like oh I think I got a song out of this um and it was just through this sort of like um processing which is a kind of particular practice in um um in in improvisation when you you understand sort of like the dimensions of your craft so well that you can pull put something into that process and produce something like really really um like algorithmically spontaneously you know what I mean which is what each of those musicians was doing to the point where they took them so far out out being this expression from Chicago when you're really experimenting you're out they took the five notes so far out that I had to ask them like actually I do need you to play the five notes because they were finding the inters in between the notes like you know what I mean which was like actually Splendid and wonderful um and and the one the gentleman in the turquoise um the um shirt who who who is particularly rebellious like hey literally that cut was like I left that in because I was just looking at him like we've had this conversation before so so he like wraps it up and then just plays the five notes like at the end he's like all right you got what you wanted um so it was like kind of wonderful to watch each of them process that that material definitely and I guess you know in terms of thinking about music music and your work um I wanted to maybe see if we can make connections between the other screenings um uh ulyses Jenkins Planet X and of course you know a comra uh the last angel of history I mean that is almost 30 years ago and wild to watch it yeah and it's still um so relevant I was like finding like the connections between your work and 2014 and then uh Professor jenkins's work in 2006 and um I was wondering how does it feel to sort of watch it again and um my second question is sort of sunra uh if you can tell me he's iconic I mean he's foundational um he's a thread that I think connects all of you um and uh this afro futurist imaginary and maybe you could reflect a little bit on his uh continued uh significance oh I sunra sunra is the thread through like all all of it and I I feel even though I think that um The Proposal that Lee Scratch Perry and George Clinton and sunra are kind of like a trinity I agree with that but in terms of what's threaded through all of the musicians and and writers and thinkers in that film I think sunra is is a kind of clear link and even like quite personally like um Greg Tate's dear to me and and and like um really mentored me through learning about Sun raw's work and quite ironically before um I I'd seen this film before I met my art gallery dealer in Chicago John Corbett who's the white dude in the desert talking about like the academic um scholar um um who like you know this is 2006 when this is me or oh the last Ang 96 1996 so in like 2016 starts representing me wow that's it's wild like really wild because I'd seen this film many many times and and it wasn't until he mentioned oh yeah when Jonna cpra wanted me to be in I was like that was you you know what I mean like just never put it together um so on a personal level that's like kind of amazing to watch um and wonderful to see Greg um but um I think in terms of sun Ra's influence the thing that's so interesting thing about him is that he wasn't just a musician he was also a writer he also um um had like a real relationship to material culture which is clear in this in the way that he um dressed himself and his band um and there was like there for me was so much to learn about how to how to produce uh work um in in in a universe that is also a universe that's made for others which is very much what SRA was always trying to do with his orchestra with the interactive performing with the Poetry with all of it with the the Optics that you know right wonderful and um I guess you know I do want to turn it over to the audience maybe one or two questions but I guess you know I wanted to talk a little bit more about your your current work sir Jer uh we had an opportunity uh to see that film and to think about how you continue to work work within uh afrofuturism or even the genre science fiction um and how it maybe continues to animate your work your thinking well I mean I think you know movies and sci-fi are are meant to be because so much of when you're thinking about Galactic cosmological ideas has to do with time and and Cinema handles time like nothing else um and and so to me that that is I guess at the core of like my my real interest in I oh my God I forgot the question I'm so sorry sh what did you ask me I guess you know thinking about I'm so sorry I just got off a plane I'm so sorry I'll do better thinking about how I guess um perhaps the um afrofuturism as a as you you once called I think a conceptual framework still functions in your work in your body of work and I was just thinking of Sojourner what you filled at you filmed um over in Joshua Tree no pure voice it's funny I don't I maybe I need to rewatch the film but I really wasn't thinking about afro futurism when I made that film but I think afro futurism as my as I understand it which is I do not think is a kind of popular understanding I do think afrofuturism is thinking about the past and thinking about um the experience of Blackness as one of having um having an estrangement with um the notion of the human and and and having to look towards um other modes of existence other forms of beings from machines and Technology uh animals plants etc for uh a different kind of Logics for survival and Li ation um and so I'm always thinking about those things but I'm I'm just I mean I hope I I I'm much less interested in the kind of Cosplay aspects of afrofuturism as it's sort of expressed now that um um uh going into outer space is actually something that we do right here I mean listening to Derek May man that guy's brain um whoa you know like he kept Astro projecting like crazy um you that's something that we're always doing here so and then so that's just the tactic that I used to structure s um sourer which was dealing with three different women in three different times and places and that's what I was bring up Cinemas because movies can do that that's what a film can do with like um like na natural Logics like you don't have to force this jump you don't have to explain that you're going to jump you can just jump you know wonderful thank you so much and um I'd like to maybe if anyone has questions or would like to join the conversation there's one hand in the back and I don't know if we have someone who's going around hello oh um so in the in the film George Clinton said he pictured black people in space like with a like in a Cadillac kind of chilling so what do you picture black people in space looking like well I mean they're in space um we uh they're in and I'm obsessed with black astronauts obsessed um and um and their research and their reasons for being there and the things they do when they come back down and the things they say and um I I think astronauts I wish they had a I wish they had a a bigger social platform but I believe that like they're actually kept away from us because they all go up there and look at the planet and then come back and say what are we doing like stop all this this is a Little Rock in space y'all that's what they all say and I think that there there that that mess message that's not like the the military industrial complex uh space colonization message that um that's not useful uh so when I think about black people in space I think about people who have a like have an embodied and deep and profound understanding of like the fact that this is our spaceship yes that you know that this this planet Keeps Us Alive that we don't save the planet the planet enables us to be and I think that that becomes more clear the further away from this planet that you get some more questions yes of your had any of the musicians seen it no which I thought was crazy I was sending them YouTube Links of like the very last scene you know where the mothership lands and the whole orchestral thing and I think that's actually what really inspired them and shelene had asked if like I thought John Williams was inspired by the Avant guard and I um I don't know I don't know that but I do know that it seemed to me that after I sent the YouTube link the musicians came back with these really really um interesting composition so I think they were responding um I think it was a conversation you know what I mean but no they hadn't I thought the guy in the film they start very right right yes yes and the base with the tuba like yes yes yeah and same with the Contra bassoon who could hit that very low note that starts to turn like a purr like he really did that too yeah okay I think we could take maybe one more question oh we have one in the back um I wanted to ask if I kind I came kind of late so I apologize if this is something that was already covered but um what is your if you have one a personal connection with Octavia Butler and or her work oh yeah I mean I've been reading Octavia Butler's book since she started writing them and um because I was a Sci-Fi nerd so you just go to the Sci-Fi section of the bookstore and you look for something and they always have these very strange you know covers but if you read the description I remember the first one I bought was um oh God I can't remember the title but it's about the aliens and the symbiotic relationship Genesis thank you and um and um uh um the character's name is like Gan or something and I was like huh so then I cracked open the book and I was like I think this is about a black person and so I bought it and then I was like I just hunting hunting hunting for her books which were actually so hard to find all the way into the OTS and now thank goodness um they're not right that's such a great Trilogy thank you for asking about Octavia Butler I mean she appears here in the uh last angel of History the only woman yes and um very powerful I mean you know some people are no longer with us but their work is and I'm you know I think Octavia Butler has also sort of been part of this sort of new I need circulation or popularity of Afro futurism within the last 10 years I think absolutely and I think she's really important too I think she's really the reason why even the notion of Science Fiction is so expansive because she comes out of this training of like hard sci-fi which was like hard science you know what I mean like a kind of Kim Stanley Robinson like I talked to the NASA scientist who built the Mars machine you know what I mean that she comes out of that training but then was writing things like Kindred which can't be explained like she can't even describe what's occurring people are just moving through time and I think that the the innovations that she made on every level in terms of how she used the genre and pushed it her along with Ursula Lewin I think is like just crucial and yeah and um yeah I just wish there were some more books to read well I wish we could continue our conversation but uh Colleen thank you so much than you pleas than for being patient