Wednesday, July 17, 7pm
$7 General / $5 Members / Free for ArtsAccess pass holders

Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2019, Hale County This Morning, This Evening is composed of intimate and unencumbered moments of people in a community, allowing the viewer an emotive impression of the Historic South. A visually stunning film which trumpets the beauty of life and consequences of the social construction of race, it is a testament to dreaming – despite the odds.

How does one express the reality of individuals whose public image, lives, and humanity originate in exploitation? Photographer and filmmaker RaMell Ross employs the integrity of nonfiction filmmaking and the currency of stereotypical imagery to fill in the gaps between individual black male icons. Hale County This Morning, This Evening is a lyrical innovation to the form of portraiture that boldly ruptures racist aesthetic frameworks that have historically constricted the expression of African American men on film.

In the lives of protagonists Daniel and Quincy, quotidian moments and the surrounding southern landscape are given importance, drawing poetic comparisons between historical symbols and the African American banal. Images are woven together to replace narrative arc with visual movements. As Ross crafts an inspired tapestry made up of time, the human soul, history, environmental wonder, sociology, and cosmic phenomena, a new aesthetic framework emerges that offers a new way of seeing and experiencing the heat, and the hearts of people in the Black Belt region of the U.S. as well far beyond.

This screening is part of our summer film series, Three Storms for Summer Eves. These three dreamy films to provide moments to restore, heal, and gather strength for the months ahead. Taking place on Wednesday evenings, we invite audiences to leave work, join us to find relief in the dark, and to exit and see the night anew. Feel free to bring pillows. Co-presented with Cultivate Cinema Circle.

June 19: Blissfully Yours

July 17: Hale County This Morning, This Evening

August 14: Endless Dreams and Water Between

Cultivate Cinema Circle is an emerging screening series that aims to help foster a healthy, fervent film culture in the Buffalo area.