AMERICA: FILM REVIEW
On the twenty-eighth of February, I stumbled into the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) for the first time, starry-eyed and not knowing what to expect. I knew nothing of the museum’s exhibits. All I knew was that I wanted to explore (and, of course, catch sight of Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night). After perusing the MoMA for hours, my friends and I walked wearily, inching dangerously close to the exit, when we came across a special exhibit. In it, we found large screens arranged in the form of an X. Black-and-white films were projected onto them, creating a mesmerizing parallelism that echoed around the room, even on the walls. In awe, we sat down to watch Garrett Bradley’s short film, America.
Bradley’s short film serves as a response to the MoMA’s uncovering of Lime Kiln Club Field Day (1914), which is believed to be the oldest surviving feature film with an all-black cast. Seventy percent of all feature-length films in the U.S. made during 1912-1929 have been lost to fire and deterioration vulnerability, or neglect and destruction. Inspired by this extreme loss of memory and culture, Bradley reimagines both true and fictionalized black figures of the early twentieth century that have been lost to time. Of these figures is composer and singer Harry T. Burleigh and jazz bandleader James Reese Europe. The project is composed of twelve film shots interspersed with borrowed footage from Lime Kiln Club Field Day. The result is a spellbinding mesh of visuals that leaves the audience emotional but unable to look away from the beauty, the joy, the heart and darkness of being black and American.
In Bradley’s Virtual Views interview with Studio Museum in Harlem’s director and chief curator Thelma Golden, she explains that her inspiration for America partly lies with what is most commonly referred to as the LA Rebellion (which Bradley claims is a problematic title and opts for neoclassical movement). This neoclassical movement refers to the process of making films out of necessity rather than abundant resources. Specifically, Bradley refers to black American filmmakers. This movement resulted in a strong divide between American cinema, black cinema, and people’s perceptions of the U.S.
Bradley is no stranger to challenges either. In America, she aims to challenge our perceptions of history and “truths.” By using popular historic images and replacing figures or predominantly white American ideals (such as the boy scouts) with black actors, Bradley explores her belief that time and perception are flexible, not fixed. To me, this concept alludes to the fact that black people have always been a part of America, despite being largely invisible in popular media. We have become somewhat of a rare sighting to white suburban America. I find it fascinating how Bradley reinvents the side of America most often depicted—the “popular”—as an effort to remind her audience that black Americans belong there too.
While dealing with perception, America also focuses on chronology. As previously reviewed by writer Teresa Xie, Bradley’s film Time deals with chronology as well, depicting the course of twenty years through a family’s home videos. Bradley’s interest in chronology piques mine as well. In her interview with Golden, Bradley states that she played around with organizing America’s films non-chronologically. She attempted layering the films atop each other to create an overwhelming sense of simultaneity, but in the end she decided to order the films chronologically and beside each other in the shape of an X. I find this particularly interesting, as I did not believe that the films had to be viewed in order. I found that the images were compelling in their silence and force alone, and the cyclical manner of the film would not have been lost on me no matter the order of its visuals. In essence, the order is not what moved me about the piece, but rather the effect of seeing black people at the center of American history.
Bradley’s wish is to make a film “like the Bible”—one you can open at any point and learn something from. In her art, that’s exactly what she’s done. In 2019, Bradley received the Philip Guston Rome Prize. In addition, she was the first black woman to win the directing award in the U.S. category at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. America follows closely at the heels of her previous works. The film is a hypnotizing view into the black America that has been so underrepresented in the past and continues to be by non-black artists to this day. In order to view America in the way Bradley intends, you must fully immerse yourself in it. You must understand the imagery and the performances, as Bradley describes them, as a form of resistance to a system that has tried so hard to forget them. Through the work of this film, black Americans strive to reclaim their rightful place in this country’s history. Because our ability to feel heard, Bradley tells Golden, is to feel loved, in the end.
As a part of the Virtual Views and Elaine Dannheisser Projects Series, America is being displayed on the first floor of the MoMA until March 21st, 2021. Before it becomes available to the general public, you can view pieces of the work and her interview with Thelma Golden here.