GANJA & HESS 

virtual film screening and discussion 

Friday, June 18 – Thursday, June 24

Intro by Curtis Caesar John, executive director of THE LUMINAL THEATER

Part of Artists Space’s TILL THEY LISTEN: BILL GUNN DIRECTS AMERICA, a comprehensive gallery exhibition and a series of public programs celebrating the life and towering, multi-faceted work of the filmmaker, playwright, novelist, and actor Bill Gunn (1934–1989); Organized by Artists Space, Hilton Als and Jake Perlin, in collaboration with Sam Waymon, Nicholas Forster, Awoye Timpo, Chiz Schultz, and Ishmael Reed

about Ganja & Hess

Cut by timid distributors and inappropriately marketed as grindhouse blaxploitation, this eerie, sui generis work by utterly iconoclastic director Bill Gunn (Personal Problems) is, in its original form, nothing short of a masterpiece of ‘70s American cinema. Night of the Living Dead’s Duane Jones is an anthropologist living in aristocratic splendor in the Hudson Valley who finds himself lusting for blood after being stabbed by his unstable assistant (Gunn). What proceeds from this is a baroque, atmospheric rumination on the clash between African-American and Euro-American culture, animist and Christian influences, and homo–and hetero–desire. With Marlene Clark and Sam Waymon, who also composed the film’s haunting score.

This version of Ganja & Hess, saved by scholar Pearl Bowser, represents the director’s cut of the film, restored by the Museum of Modern Art from a 35mm negative, with support from the Film Foundation, and released by Kino Lorber.

AND CATCH OUR SPECIAL LEGACY PANEL:
Directly after the film (so don't shut down the movie, keep watching!), The Luminal forums with three working art & culture creators and thinkers whose practices are directly informed by Bill Gunn’s lineage.  In discussing how Gunn’s varied works are expressed in their artistic, critical, and life practices, these artists will also share how their and his works create more profound and lasting ways to be well-rounded changemakers with the ability to break away from systems of oppression.

Panelists: 

Dr. Janus Adams, Emmy Award-winning journalist, historian, entrepreneur, bestselling author, and Gunn collaborator

Dennis Leroy Kangalee, playwright/author/filmmaker, “As an Act of Protest”

Zena Sade Dixon, editor/writer RealQueenofHorror.com

Maxx Pinkins, screenwriter & actor