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Vibrations for a New People Series in the Walker Cinema Explores past and Present This May

A view of a disco ball on the ceiling in a grey hexigon shape with a can light. Text on the bottom says in yellow: put your hands inside.

How does a gesture, image, or word from history get passed down across time and space? What does it make possible in the here and now? Riffing on themes found within the exhibitions Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody and Sadie Barnette’s The New Eagle Creek Saloon, the cinema series Vibrations for a New People considers queer cultural legacies and transmission, exploring how the past resonates powerfully in the present. Guest curated by writer Jon Davies, this series examines how signals sent decades ago cry out to be heard today and how conversations started by those who came before are rekindled in the present when lessons from past movements demand to be relearned. 

Read more about Vibrations for a New People in the original article, Morbid Symptoms, by guest curator Jon Davies, here. 

Born in Flames by Lizzie Borden
Friday, May 3, 7 pm
$15 ($12 Walker members and seniors), free for students
“I was so angry when I made it—now I think women are angry all over again and reclaiming that in a new way.” —Lizzie Borden 

Radical indie filmmaker Lizzie Borden set her 1983 sci-fi film, Born in Flames, in a dystopian future (aka now). Using documentary techniques alongside satirical comedy and invented narratives to tell the story of a feminist insurgency against a “Socialist Democratic” government, the film follows the news that the Black radical founder of the Women’s Army (Jeanne Satterfield) has gone missing in New York City and the diverse coalition of queer feminist revolutionaries who rise up to fight the System. 1983, 80 min., 35mm. 

Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with restoration funding from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and The Film Foundation. 

A Q&A with Lizzie Borden and Jon Davies follows the screening. 

The Brenda and Glennda Show/Glennda and Friends by Glenn Belverio
Saturday, May 4, 7 pm
$15 ($12 Walker members, seniors, and students)
In 1990s Manhattan, a dynamic drag queen duo, Brenda Sexual and Glennda Orgasm, produced and cohosted a popular underground public access cable series The Brenda and Glennda Show. Taking drag out of the nightclubs and into the streets, their show boldly mixed political activism with humor, art, and visibility. In 1993, the show became Glennda and Friends, hosted by Glenn Belverio, who expanded the “post-queer” talk show format to feature provocative costars such as queer filmmaker Bruce LaBruce, transgressive author Bruce Benderson, performance artist Vaginal Davis, and guerrilla scholar Camille Paglia. Both shows chronicled the radical queer and drag scenes and activism that grew out of the first years of the AIDS pandemic, creating an inspiring and iconoclastic archive for today. 1991–1994, US, digital, 72 min. 

A Q&A with Glenn Belverio and Jon Davies follows the screening. 

The program includes the following episodes:
Seize Control of the Taj Mahal, 1991, US, digital, 14 min.
On the Campaign Trail with Joan Jett Blakk, 1992, US, digital, 29 min.
Glennda and Bruce Do Times Square, 1994, US, digital, 29 min. 

Narcissister Organ Player by Narcissister
Friday, May 10, 7 pm
$15 ($12 Walker members and seniors), free for students
Masked and merkin-clad performance artist Narcissister reveals the deeper meanings behind her spectacular onstage interactions with mannequins, veils, a giant sculpted vagina, and her own body orifices. Growing up the biracial child of a Sephardic Jewish mother from Morocco and an African American father from Los Angeles, the Brooklyn-based artist reflects on the evolution of her work rooted in family, embodied culture, and erotic expression. With elaborate costumes, pop music, and humor, Narcissister Organ Player is a thrilling, profound, and utterly moving portrait of the liberation of body and psyche through art. 2018, US, digital, 91 min. 

Transmission Shorts Program
Saturday, May 11, 7 pm
$15 ($12 Walker members, seniors, and students)
Curated by Jon Davies, the Transmission Shorts Program examines experimental film/video works from the past decade that reimagine the possibility of communication, exchange, and intimacy across generational lines. Works consider the erotics of loss and of missing out as well as complicated connections with parental figures—real or fantasized. Others offer models for how to map inaccessible spaces, unbury repressed histories, and how to disappear. Together this collection of shorts exhibit what scholar Carolyn Dinshaw calls a “queer desire for history,” using moving images to viscerally touch across time and its ruptures. Total runtime: 75 min.