The Friends of African and African American Art present the 30th Annual Alain Locke Awards on Saturday, February 25th at 5:30 p.m. in Kresge Reception. The award ceremony will honor artists Ming Smith and Henry Heading.   

The Alain Locke International Award will be presented this year to Detroit-born photographer Ming Smith, known for her black and white street photography depicting various aspects of humanity.  Smith was the first woman to become a member of the Kamoinge Workshop, founded in 1963, a collective of Black photographers documenting Black life in New York, which is still active today. By the late 1970s, she had become the first African American female photographer whose work was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City.  In 2023, Smith was selected as one of the recipients of The International Center of Photography’s Infinity Awards honoring outstanding achievements in photography. Currently, her art is being exhibited at MOMA. Valerie Mercer, curator and department head of African American Art at the DIA, will lead Smith in a conversation about her photography and career.    

The local Alain Locke Recognition Award will be presented to Detroit artist Henry Heading. A longtime member of the Detroit Fine Arts Breakfast Club, Heading’s realistic paintings feature African American celebrities and everyday people of interest to him.  

USA/2022—directed by Harold Crooks and Judd Tully | 93 min.

The Melt Goes On Forever chronicles the singular career of the elusive African-American art star David Hammons, from Watts rebellion era ’60s L.A. to global art world prominence today. Hammons’ category-defying practice–rooted in a deep critique of American society and the elite art world–is in the words of one art critic “an invitation to confront the fissures between races” as the artist seeks to go beyond the dominant culture and his own to a new one for the 21st century.

Featuring eminent artists, curators and critics, a rich trove of archival footage, animation, and an evocative soundscape, The Melt is a striking portrait of a celebrated African-American art star whose elusive, rule-breaking practice offers an essential commentary on race in America.

Black History Month programs are generously supported by the Arn and Nancy Tellem Foundation.

Let the Good Times Roll illuminates the joys and complexity of growing up. Underscored by the music of Rock & Roll pioneers and torchbearers from Little Richard to Gary Clark Jr., Let the Good Times Roll is a musical revue that reminds us of the beauty of the present and the promise of the future.

For more information about reserving a ticket for Mosaic in Concert visit their website here

Black History Month programs are generously supported by the Arn and Nancy Tellem Foundation.

Kenneth Thompkins is the Principal Trombonist of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

This Structurally Sound concert is a co-production between the DIA and Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings and features Ken Thompkins in combination with music, art and poetry.

The concert will feature new compositions by Jeff Scott and Maurice Draughn and poetry by Kalimah Johnson. This will be an immersive experience not to be missed.

Black History Month programs are generously supported by the Arn and Nancy Tellem Foundation.

USA/1998—directed by Cauleen Smith | 86 minutes

A lost treasure of 1990s independent filmmaking, Afrofuturist artist Cauleen Smith’s UCLA thesis film embeds an incisive look at racial injustice within a lovingly handmade buddy movie-murder-mystery-romance. Observing the alarming rate at which the young Black men around her are dying—indeed, “becoming extinct,” as she sees it—brash California art student Pica (Toby Smith) begins preserving their existence in Polaroid snapshots, along the way forging a friendship with a gender nonconforming young woman (April Barnett), experiencing love and loss, and being drawn into the search for a serial killer at large in the city.

Capturing the vibrant community spirit of Oakland in the nineties, Smith crafts both a rare cinematic celebration of Black female creativity and a moving elegy for a generation of lost African American men. This superb new 4K restoration, undertaken by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, was supervised by Cauleen Smith and premiered at the 2022 New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center.

The DFT presents this special preview screening in advance of the film’s national release. 2000 Independent Spirit Award Winner; Grand Jury Prize for Best Film, Urbanworld Film Festival.
 

Black stories take the spotlight to highlight short films that share the joy, determination, resilience, and complexity of being Black and young. Explore a range of genres and styles in a program that spans the globe. These amazing short films were audience favorites and award-winners at the 2022 New York International Children’s Film Festival and are sure to inspire curiosity and conversation for viewers big and small.  

Recommended for families with children ages 9 and up. In English, Portuguese, and Luganda with English subtitles. (76min)  

Black History Month programs are generously supported by the Arn and Nancy Tellem Foundation.

Comic Escape

• United States, Live Action, Alphonso McAuley, 2021, 15 min.  

A young boy unexpectedly finds a comic book that changes his reality. 

Cupids

• United States, Live Action, Zoey Martinson, 2021, 10 min.      

This whimsical comedy love letter to New York's essential workers follows a whole class on the last day of school as they scheme to find the perfect partner for their adored bus driver, Ms. Cheryl, and save her from a lonely summer without them. 

Generation Impact: The Coder

• United States, Documentary, Samantha Knowles, 2021, 7 min.  

Jay Jay Patton was only 13 when she designed and built an app to help kids connect with their incarcerated parents, inspired by her own experience. Now she is creating a coding academy to help other kids do the same. 

My Name is Maluum 

• Brazil, Animation, Luísa Copetti, 2021, 8 min.  

Maalum comes from a home surrounded by love and Afro-centered references. When her classmates tease her about her name, Maluum discovers the lovely legacy of her name and ancestry. 
 

The Night I Left America

• Uganda, United States, Live Action, Laki Karavias, 2021, 14 min. 

While anxiously awaiting the results of his mother’s visa renewal request, a teenage boy living in Texas conjures memories of his life in Uganda. 

Room Rodeo

• United States, Live Action, Daniel Kayamba, 2021, 14 min.  

Grounded and with a last-minute school project due, Jamil takes matters into his own hands in order to prove he is the great-grandson of a legendary Black cowboy. 
 

Wolf and Cub

• United States, Animation, Marvin Bynoe, 2021, 8 min.  

A father and son cross a world of imagination in order to return their mother’s forgotten lunch. 

Presented in partnership with New York International Children’s Film Festival 

USA/2022—directed by  Johanna Hamilton and Yoruba Richen | 96 min.

Join us for a screening of The Rebellious Life Of Mrs. Rosa Parks, followed by a special conversation moderated by the film’s executive producer Soledad O’Brien, and joined by Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s Secretary of State, Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers, the film’s directors Yoruba Richen and Johanna Hamilton, Dr. Jeanne Theoharis and Lonnie McCauley, Rosa Parks’ grandnephew.

The Rebellious Life Of Mrs. Rosa Parks corrects the record on Parks’ often-overlooked accomplishments and the erasure of her radical politics. In short, what we are taught in school about Rosa Parks is a mere fraction of the full story about who she truly was.

This special evening is co-presented by SO’B Productions, American Federation of Teachers, The League, Freep Film Festival and Friends of Detroit Film Theatre.

“Perhaps foremost, Mrs. Rosa Parks highlights the selflessness of its subject and seeks to provide a detailed portrait of a woman who, through the vagaries of history, was frequently reduced to a symbol." –Brian Lowry, CNN.com

Black History Month programs are generously supported by the Arn and Nancy Tellem Foundation.

Please join us for the 2023 Black History Month Educator Workshop! Participants will experience the Africana field trip, learn about recent acquisitions of African American art, and preview the forthcoming retrospective exhibition from British-Ghanian photographer James Barnor. Classroom applications will be explored.

All educators are welcome at this event. SCECHs pending.
 

Friday Night Live partners with Neighborly Need, Inc., a non-profit committed to strengthening urban communities and developing projects that address urgent problems and needs.

This performance features a commissioned work, Fighting for the Children, by saxophonist/clarinetist Wendell Harrison. The work features Wendell Harrison leading a large ensemble of rhythm section, horns, and a string orchestra of young artists.  

Black History Month programs are generously supported by the Arn and Nancy Tellem Foundation.