Wanda's Picks

THOMAS ALLEN HARRIS joins me to talk about the National Broadcast of his work: THROUGH A LENS DARKLY: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People.

The Producer, Director Writer was raised in the Bronx and Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania. He is the founder and President Chimpanzee Productions, a company dedicated to producing unique audio-visual experiences that illuminate the Human Condition and the search for identity, family, and spirituality. Chimpanzee’s innovative and award-winning performance-based documentary films - VINTAGE – Families of Value, E Minha Cara/That’s My Face, and Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela - have received critical acclaim at International film festivals such as Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, FESPACO, Outfest, Flaherty and Cape Town and have been broadcast on PBS, the Sundance Channel, ARTE, as well as CBC, Swedish broadcasting Network and New Zealand Television. Mr. Harris’ video and installations – including Splash, Black Body, AFRO (is just a Hairstyle) Notes on a Journey Through The African Diaspora and ALCHEMY - have been featured at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial, the Corcoran Gallery, Reina Sophia, London Institute of the Arts, Gwangju Biennale, and the Long Beach Museum of Art. Harris has received numerous awards and fellowships including a United States Artist Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Rockefeller Fellowship, two Emmy nominations as well as Sundance Film Institute Directors Fellowships and a Tribeca Film Institute Nelson Mandela Award. A graduate of Harvard College and the Whitney Independent Study Program, Harris has taught at a variety of institutions including University of California San Diego where he received tenure as an Associate Professor of Media Arts. A published photographer, curator, and write, Mr. Harris lectures widely on the use of media as a tool for social change.

THOMAS ALLEN HARRIS joins me to talk about the National Broadcast of his work: THROUGH A LENS DARKLY: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People.

The Producer, Director Writer was raised in the Bronx and Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania. He is the founder and President Chimpanzee Productions, a company dedicated to producing unique audio-visual experiences that illuminate the Human Condition and the search for identity, family, and spirituality. Chimpanzee’s innovative and award-winning performance-based documentary films - VINTAGE – Families of Value, E Minha Cara/That’s My Face, and Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela - have received critical acclaim at International film festivals such as Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, FESPACO, Outfest, Flaherty and Cape Town and have been broadcast on PBS, the Sundance Channel, ARTE, as well as CBC, Swedish broadcasting Network and New Zealand Television. Mr. Harris’ video and installations – including Splash, Black Body, AFRO (is just a Hairstyle) Notes on a Journey Through The African Diaspora and ALCHEMY - have been featured at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial, the Corcoran Gallery, Reina Sophia, London Institute of the Arts, Gwangju Biennale, and the Long Beach Museum of Art. Harris has received numerous awards and fellowships including a United States Artist Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Rockefeller Fellowship, two Emmy nominations as well as Sundance Film Institute Directors Fellowships and a Tribeca Film Institute Nelson Mandela Award. A graduate of Harvard College and the Whitney Independent Study Program, Harris has taught at a variety of institutions including University of California San Diego where he received tenure as an Associate Professor of Media Arts. A published photographer, curator, and write, Mr. Harris lectures widely on the use of media as a tool for social change.

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

Guests:

1. Black Choreographers: Here & Now

2. Shaka Jamal Redman on GameChangers

3. Kahil El Zabar on the AACM

4. Brother Fleetwood, dir. Da Cotton Pickas

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

Guests:

1. Black Choreographers: Here & Now

2. Shaka Jamal Redman on GameChangers

3. Kahil El Zabar on the AACM

4. Brother Fleetwood, dir. Da Cotton Pickas

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

1. Aliyah Dunn-Salahuddin is an artist and educator in SF. Born in the SF Bay Area and raised in San Francisco, the CCSF history professor joins us to talk about, the Bayview Hunter's Point Riot in 1966, in a lecture at the John Adams Center Library at City College, San Francisco, 10:45-12:15, 1860 Hayes Street, San Francisco, CA 94117, (415) 561-1956 or [email protected]. It is a free event.

2. Mighty Real: A Fabulous Sylvester Musical creators, Anthony Wayne and Kendrell Bowman. Mighty Real opens at Brava Theatre in San Francisco tonight, Feb. 11. See www.brava.org & http://www.fabuloussylvester.com/about.html

3. Rhodessa Jones (director) & Ryan Nicole Austin (Xtigone "Tig") join us to talk about the World Premiere of Nambi E. Kelly's "Xtigone," @ the African American Shakespeare Company at the Buriel Clay Theatre, African-American Art & Culture Complex, 762 Fulton Street, San Francisco. Tickets: $15-$34.00: http://www.african-americanshakes.org/productions/xtigone/

Music: Archie Shepp: "Revolution"

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

1. Aliyah Dunn-Salahuddin is an artist and educator in SF. Born in the SF Bay Area and raised in San Francisco, the CCSF history professor joins us to talk about, the Bayview Hunter's Point Riot in 1966, in a lecture at the John Adams Center Library at City College, San Francisco, 10:45-12:15, 1860 Hayes Street, San Francisco, CA 94117, (415) 561-1956 or [email protected]. It is a free event.

2. Mighty Real: A Fabulous Sylvester Musical creators, Anthony Wayne and Kendrell Bowman. Mighty Real opens at Brava Theatre in San Francisco tonight, Feb. 11. See www.brava.org & http://www.fabuloussylvester.com/about.html

3. Rhodessa Jones (director) & Ryan Nicole Austin (Xtigone "Tig") join us to talk about the World Premiere of Nambi E. Kelly's "Xtigone," @ the African American Shakespeare Company at the Buriel Clay Theatre, African-American Art & Culture Complex, 762 Fulton Street, San Francisco. Tickets: $15-$34.00: http://www.african-americanshakes.org/productions/xtigone/

Music: Archie Shepp: "Revolution"

We close with an interview with Elizabeth Carter (Mai Tamba) & Katherine Renee Turner (Jekesai/Ester) in the Bay Area Premiere of Danai Gurira's The Convert at Marin Theatre Company, February 19 – March 15, 2015.

Elizabeth Carter has appeared at MTC in Beggar’s Holiday, The Crucible and The Art of Dining. She was most recently seen as The Eternal Feminine in Wittenberg at the Aurora Theatre Company. Carter has performed with numerous Bay Area theaters. Her favorite roles include Rose in Fences, the Bawd in Pericles, Millie in Trouble in Mind, Effie in Dreamgirls, Mistress Ford in Merry Wives of Winsor and Agnes in Agnes of God. Carter teaches Shakespeare performance at Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts and has directed for the Cal Shakes Theater Summer Conservatory for nearly 20 years. She resides in Oakland and can be heard in the historic Peralta House audio exhibit.

Katherine Renee Turner (Jekesai/Ester) has appeared at MTC in Fetch Clay, Make Man. A Washington D.C.-based actor, she has appeared in that region in Fetch Clay, Make Man at Round House Theatre; The Threepenny Opera at Signature Theatre; A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing and The Tempest at Shakespeare Theatre Company; The Laramie Project at Ford’s Theatre; The Twelve Days of Christmas at Adventure Theatre,  Rumplestiltskin at Imagination Stage and Photo-Op at UrbanArias. Turner is a graduate of Ithaca College and the National Theater Institute at Eugene O’Neill Theatre.

We close with an interview with Elizabeth Carter (Mai Tamba) & Katherine Renee Turner (Jekesai/Ester) in the Bay Area Premiere of Danai Gurira's The Convert at Marin Theatre Company, February 19 – March 15, 2015.

Elizabeth Carter has appeared at MTC in Beggar’s Holiday, The Crucible and The Art of Dining. She was most recently seen as The Eternal Feminine in Wittenberg at the Aurora Theatre Company. Carter has performed with numerous Bay Area theaters. Her favorite roles include Rose in Fences, the Bawd in Pericles, Millie in Trouble in Mind, Effie in Dreamgirls, Mistress Ford in Merry Wives of Winsor and Agnes in Agnes of God. Carter teaches Shakespeare performance at Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts and has directed for the Cal Shakes Theater Summer Conservatory for nearly 20 years. She resides in Oakland and can be heard in the historic Peralta House audio exhibit.

Katherine Renee Turner (Jekesai/Ester) has appeared at MTC in Fetch Clay, Make Man. A Washington D.C.-based actor, she has appeared in that region in Fetch Clay, Make Man at Round House Theatre; The Threepenny Opera at Signature Theatre; A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing and The Tempest at Shakespeare Theatre Company; The Laramie Project at Ford’s Theatre; The Twelve Days of Christmas at Adventure Theatre,  Rumplestiltskin at Imagination Stage and Photo-Op at UrbanArias. Turner is a graduate of Ithaca College and the National Theater Institute at Eugene O’Neill Theatre.

On October 30, 2012 we spoke to Ava DuVernay, director, The Middle of Nowhere (now Selma); then Amara Tabour Smith, choreographer about a new project.

On October 30, 2012 we spoke to Ava DuVernay, director, The Middle of Nowhere (now Selma); then Amara Tabour Smith, choreographer about a new project.