Thursday, February 28th, 6:30pm
Made in Harlem: Harlem School 1970
This is a Free Program
@ The City College of New York
Shepard Hall
259 Convent Avenue
Co-presented by the Documentary Forum at CCNY, Third World Newsreel, and Maysles Cinema
Phil Gries, 2018, 50 mins
Direct Cinema style look at the life of students and educators in 1970 in a Harlem elementary school, Community School 30 at the time, located at 128th street and Lexington. Currently the building is divided between a public school and a charter school. Shot on 16mm, footage was added, and the film was restored, and re-edited in the summer of 2017.
Q&A with Phil Gries, and educators and students from the film.
This program is part of
Made In Harlem: Class of ‘68
Fall 2018- Spring 2019
In the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King (April 4th, 1968) and the subsequent riots throughout America’s tapestry of urban centers – a fruitful reformer’s zeal possessed the U.S. which lead in part to the dawn of Black and Ethnic Studies programs, and the first community colleges. More locally in Harlem the Studio Museum was founded, as well as the National Black Theater, and El Museo del Barrio. As well in 1968, galvanized by the assassination of MLK, the New York City Ballet’s first African American star Arthur Mitchell (1934-2018) began teaching at the Harlem School of the Arts, and formed what would become the Dance Theater of Harlem in 1969.
Made in Harlem: Class of ’68, a film and speaker series, unpacks and explores the period before, during, and after the birth of these key cultural institutions in Harlem, as well as their impact, a period where Black Power, the Civil Rights Era, and Black Arts Movement coalesced and helped forge new aesthetics, politics, understandings and philosophies – the legacy of which is found everywhere throughout the planet in the early 21st century.
As Harlem, the United States, and the planet goes through rapid transformation there is hunger and yearning for context, understanding and literacy of our shared, and often erased history. This is an opportunity to quench that thirst. Made in Harlem is programmed by Jessica Green.
This series is supported by the West Harlem Development Corporation.
