Rio’s ‘Instituto Moreira Salles’ Shows L.A. Rebellion Films this Weekend

By Jack Arnhold, Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – This Friday, March 15th to Sunday, March 17th, the ‘Instituto Moreira Salles’ (Moreira Salles Institute) in Gávea will be showing films from the critically-acclaimed L.A. Rebellion film movement, sometimes also referred to as the ‘Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers.’ The institute will be showing fourteen films over the three days, with all films being exhibited in English with Portuguese subtitles.

The L.A. Rebellion film movement is a loose grouping of African-American graduates from the UCLA Film School who produced a new wave of alternative black cinema from the sixties until the eighties. They dealt with themes of alienation, discrimination, gender and childhood, with their most famous members including Larry Clark, Charles Burnett, Billy Woodberry, and Alile Sharon Larkin.

On Friday, the exhibition will begin at 7:15PM with a showing of Jamaa Fanaka’s 1975 feature film, ‘Welcome Home Brother Charles.’ This film was independently produced, written, directed and edited by Jamaa Fanaka for his undergraduate project at UCLA. The audacious film student managed to secure a national distribution deal for this self-funded class project, which went on to gross over $500,000.

The exhibition will continue on Saturday with a showing of three short films by the movement’s female directors at 4PM. First will be Julie Dash’s 1977 short, ‘Diary of an African Nun.’ This will be followed up by Omah Diegu’s 1980 short, ‘African Woman, USA.’ And the final short film to be shown is Haile Gerima’s ‘Child of Resistence.’

Alile Sharon Larkin’s 1982 film ‘A Different Image’ will be shown at 5:30PM. This will be followed by two more shorts, shown at 8PM, which demonstrate the range and depth of the movement’s output. Charles Burnett’s 1969 short ‘Several Friends’ is first up, complemented by Julie Dash’s 1982 film ‘Illusions.’

Sunday will continue with another series of shorts at 4PM. These will include ‘The Horse’ by Charles Burnett, ‘Cycles’ by Zeinabu irene Davis, ‘The Pocketbook’ by Billy Woodberry, and ‘Your Children Come Back to You’ by Alile Sharon Larkin.

The exhibition will then finish with a showing of Billy Woodberry’s 1983 feature film, ‘Bless Their Little Hearts,’ at 6:30PM.