7:00 p.m.	Bush Mama Haile Gerima (U.S., 1975)

Cornelius Moore, codirector of the Bay Area distributor/producer California Newsreel, presented several of the films from the L.A. Rebellion in Philadelphia when they were originally released in the 1970s.

Inspired after having seen a black woman in Chicago evicted in winter, director Haile Gerima developed Bush Mama as his UCLA thesis film. Gerima blends narrative fiction, documentary, surrealism, and political modernism in his unflinching story about a pregnant welfare recipient in Watts. Featuring the magnetic Barbara O. Jones as Dorothy, Bush Mama is an unrelenting and powerfully moving look at the realities of inner-city poverty and the systemic disenfranchisement of African Americans. The film follows Dorothy as she is subjected to the oppressive cacophony of state-sponsored terrorism against the poor in her daily dealings with the welfare office and social workers. Motivated by the incarceration of her partner T.C. (Johnny Weathers) and the need to protect her daughter and unborn child, Dorothy undergoes an ideological transformation, from apathy and passivity to empowered action

—Allyson Nadia Field

• Written by Gerima. Photographed by Charles Burnett, Roderick Young. With Barbara-O (Barbara O. Jones), Johnny Weathers, Susan Williams, Cora Lee Day. (97 mins, B&W, 16mm)

Preceded by:
Daydream Therapy
(Bernard Nicolas, U.S., 1977)

Daydream Therapy is set to Nina Simone’s haunting rendition of “Pirate Jenny” and concludes with Archie Shepp’s “Things Have Got to Change.” Filmed in Marina del Rey’s Burton Chace Park by activist-turned-filmmaker Bernard Nicolas as his first project at UCLA, this short film poetically envisions the fantasy life of a hotel employee whose daydreams provide an escape from workplace indignities. Allyson Nadia Field (8 mins, Color/B&W, DigiBeta transfer from 16mm)

Total running time: 105 mins