Join us Thursday, April 10, at 6 pm, for a screening in our series a field of bloom and hum on film. The series, inspired by the exhibition a field of bloom and hum, is part of Whole Grain: Experiments in Film & Video.

The Personal Is Political Program Notes

The final screening in the program explores the intertwining of the realm of familial and intimate life with broader liberatory aspirations. Both films—a documentary feature preceded by a short—position the family unit as a queer site, radically countering the idea that queerness is an outside threat to be protected against. They imaginatively explore the complex dynamics and the political implications of queer family values and domestic ties.

Bayard & Me (dir. Matt Wolf, US, 2017, 16 min., digital)
In the late 1970s, Walter Naegle ran into a striking older African American man near Times Square; he claims his life changed forever at that moment. That man was Bayard Rustin, the influential civil rights movement leader and organizer of the March on Washington. They go to extraordinary lengths to formalize their relationship before gay marriage was legal.

Vintage: Families of Value (dir. Thomas Allen Harris, US, 1995, 72 min., digital)
Vintage: Families of Value is a meditative and reflexive look at black families through the eyes of black lesbian and gay siblings. In contrast to traditional documentaries, Vintage places the camera in the hands of family members to construct a collective autobiographical presentation of family. Interweaving conversations among family members, verité documentary footage, dramatic portrayals, experimental recreations, visual abstractions, music television strategies, and archival photographs, Vintage is a mosaic of extended black families. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.

About a field of bloom and hum on film

Weaving together historical and contemporary film/video works by artists, this five-screening series, guest-curated by Jon Davies, pulls out threads and expands on the exhibition a field of bloom and hum, which focuses on queer lives and networks. How do we survive both individually and collectively when we are under threat? How does “queer” reimagine what kinship can be? What can we do for our elders and for those who will come after us? What lessons does the queer and trans past hold for our fraught present? Rethinking body and voice, the personal and the political, and the space between the living and the dead, each program draws on a queer cultural practice that was key to the 1980s–1990s—the era when the word “queer” was first reclaimed to name a new wave of radical activist, artistic and intellectual activity catalyzed by the (ongoing) AIDS pandemic—and considers its meaning, power and value today, in a time of great peril. All shorts programs bring together 16mm film and video.

a field of bloom and hum on film Screenings

– Thursday, March 20, 6 pm: A Room of One’s Own

– Thursday, March 27, 7 pm: The Hatred of Capitalism

– Thursday, April 3, 6 pm: The Dancer from the Dance

– Saturday, April 5, 2 pm: Eternal Homes of the Transient Heart

– Thursday, April 10, 6 pm: The Personal Is Political

All screenings are free and open to the public.

About Jon Davies

Jon Davies is a curator, writer and scholar from Montreal. In 2023, he received his PhD in Art History from Stanford University and co-curated the 68th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, Queer World-Mending, with artist Steve Reinke, which took place at Skidmore College. He is the 2024–2025 General Idea Fellow at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

About Whole Grain

The Tang Teaching Museum’s Whole Grain series explores classic and contemporary work in experimental film and video. Whole Grain is organized by Assistant Director for Engagement Tom Yoshikami.