Screening and Discussion
Exploring Representation & Resistance - A Film Screening & Conversation around the film "Black Mama, White Mama" (1973) with Noelle Sepina
Join Ethnic Studies PhD Candidate NOELLE SEPINA in a film screening and conversation around the 1973 Blaxploitation film "Black Mama, White Mama." This event is hosted with the cosponsorship support of the Black Studies Project and the Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts.
Check out Noelle's description of the Saturday event:
Before actress Pam Grier became known for her iconic roles in Blaxploitation films Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974), she was cast in a number of exploitation films made in the Philippines. One of the most successful and popular of these films was Black Mama, White Mama (1973) directed by Eddie Romero – a National Artist of the Philippines for Film.
Although Black Mama, White Mama has been classified within the women-in-prison subgenre, elements of Blaxploitation – specifically the appropriation of Black Power rhetoric and aesthetics – are evident in Grier’s character and performance. In this film, Grier represented Black women’s challenge to gender, race, and class hierarchy during the 1970s. Looking at the film through the lens of Blaxploitation allows new audiences to see the contributions of the Philippines and Filipino filmmakers to Black cinema as well as the global influence of Black culture in general and the Black Power Movement in particular. This screening will help to revive Grier’s earlier work and spark conversations about the complicity with anti-Blackness in the Philippines and possibilities for cross-racial, international solidarity between Black Americans and Filipinos in the present.
After the film screening, there will be a reception where participants have an opportunity to share their thoughts about the film through curated conversation. We will focus on the theme of representation, specifically of Black and Filipino women and the Philippines, and resistance through filmmaking in order to think about the cultural impact of this film and Pam Grier’s work during the 1970s and the present. The insight gained from the discussion will support Noelle Sepina’s dissertation project, “Made in the Philippines: Blaxploitation and Transnational Collaborations in the Marcos Era.”
This event is in conversation with the recent retrospective exhibit Pam Grier: Foxy, Fierce and Fearless at the British Film Institute curated by Dr. Mia Mask, and the current exhibit Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1898-1971 at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.
RSVP for food orders will be open until Tuesday, February 7 at https://forms.gle/JDaPK4oyXNtcyCXq9
Saturday, February 11, 2023 | 4:00 PM - 7:00 PM (PST)
UCSD Mosaic Building 113
