Time is Running Out of Time: Experimental Film and Video from the L.A. Rebellion and Today

About

Time is Running Out of Time: Experimental Film and Video from the L.A. Rebellion and Todaypresents early short works of Black filmmakers and video artists in Los Angeles. Central to the exhibition is a selection from the pioneering student work of the L.A. Rebellion. In the aftermath of the 1965 Watts Uprising, a group of Black diasporic students entered the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television as part of the University’s Ethno-Communications Initiative. These students collectively became known as the Los Angeles School of Filmmakers or the L.A. Rebellion. From the late-1960s to the early-1980s, they produced experimental, documentary, and narrative film and video work. The L.A. Rebellion student films display burgeoning diasporic consciousness, strong characterizations of women, and formal experimentation.

In dialogue with these films are works from following generations of filmmakers and artists in Los Angeles. Unlike the L.A. Rebellion, these younger filmmakers do not share a common educational background. Nor yet do they benefit from critical distance and its attendant historical interpretation. As individuals, they share qualities and concerns – both aesthetic and political – with the L.A. Rebellion. Across generations, themes include the robust representation of communities, families, and lineages and the complexities of identities informed by social and political realities.

Time is Running Out of Time takes its title from Haile Gerima’s Hour Glass (1971). The phrase, from a song by The Last Poets, plays as a subconscious plea during the protagonist’s political awakening. Abiodun Oyewole’s forceful intonation underscores the urgent sociopolitical circumstances of the era as he recites, “Time is running, running running…TIME’S DONE RUN OUT!” Today, the phrase is a reminder of the continued imperative to support both the work of L.A. Rebellion filmmakers and the efforts of subsequent artists taking on important contemporary issues—issues that echo this recent past.

Filmmakers and artists in the exhibition include Sophia Nahli Allison, S. Torriano Berry, Chris Bordenave, Ben Caldwell, Renata Cherlise, Jacqueline Frazier, Haile Gerima, Russell Hamilton, Ijoema Iloputaife, Alile Sharon Larkin, Alima Lee, Barbara McCullough, Bernard Nicolas, Philana Payton, Cauleen Smith, Martine Syms, dana washington, and Mandy Harris Williams.

Time is Running Out of Time is on view February 2 to September 14, 2019 and is presented in conjunction with Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-1983 on view at The Broad from March 23 to September 1, 2019.

This exhibition is presented by Art + Practice in collaboration with The Broad, and is curated by The Broad’s Jheanelle Brown, Programs Manager and Sarah Loyer, Associate Curator and Exhibitions Manager.

Time is Running Out of Time is made possible in part by the digitization and scholarship of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. “L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema” is a project by UCLA Film & Television Archive developed as part of Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980. The original series took place at UCLA Film & Television Archive in October – December 2011, curated by Allyson Nadia Field, Jan-Christopher Horak, Shannon Kelley and Jacqueline Stewart.