Campus Arts Event
Richard Peña Selects: Residue
Watch a screening of Residue—introduced by Professor Richard Peña of Columbia University School of the Arts—as a part of the Richard Peña Selects festival.
FREE
Lenfest Center for the Arts - The Katharina Otto-Bernstein Screening Room
December 02, 2023 | 12:00 pm
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Festival Details

On the eve of his retirement, Professor Richard Peña has selected six films of particular importance to him and his career, ranging from classic Hollywood noir to one of the last Chinese films made before the Cultural Revolution to screen in this three day festival.

Film Details

Residue

2020 / 90 mins. / color

Dir. and Scr. Merawi Gerima

Cine. Mark Jeevaratnam

Cast: Dennis Lindsey, Obinna Nwachukwu, Taline Stewart

Location

The Katharina Otto-Bernstein Screening Room
Lenfest Center for the Arts
615 West 129th Street
New York, NY 10027

About The Event

The first-time feature of writer/director Merawi Gerima, Residue follows aspiring filmmaker Jay (Obinna Nwachukwu) who returns to his childhood home in a rapidly gentrifying DC neighborhood. But as a voiceover asks early in the film, is Jay’s camera a weapon for protecting his community, or is it an archaeological tool for digging up bones? The son of the LA Rebellion filmmaker Haile Gerima (Bush Mama, 1976; Sankofa, 1993), Residue’s director displays a sensibility in keeping with the filmmaking movement of which his father was a catalyst. His ability to find the lyrical in the everyday recalls Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1978), while his reflexivity echoes the more modernist leanings of his father’s cinema. Distributed by Ava DuVernay’s independent distribution company, Array, Residue effectively bridges different generations of black filmmaking even as it turns generational change into one of its major themes.

For more information, please visit the event website.

Image: Film still from Residue