BLACK FAMILIES THROUGH QUEER EYES

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Thomas Allen Harris’ debut film VINTAGE: Families of Value, Third World Newsreel and Family Pictures USA present “Black Families Through Queer Eyes,” a virtual screening and panel discussion.

VINTAGE: Families of Value is an experiment in community storytelling. Three pairs of queer Black siblings – including Thomas Allen Harris and his younger brother, artist Lyle Ashton Harris – take up cameras to document their families from separate angles. Weaving tender and difficult conversations about parent-child relationships, gender identity, and living with HIV, Harris assembles a video family album that is also a celebration of queer Black intimacy.

VINTAGE: Families of Value will stream for free from July 21 at noon to July 23 at noon. On July 22 at 6pm, there will be a panel discussion with the filmmaker, artist and Sundance New Frontier programmer Shari Frilot, and MoMA Chief Curator of Film Rajendra Roy. The panel will place VINTAGE within the broader contexts of 1990’s Black queer experimental filmmaking and current activism. Following the panel, Family Pictures USA will invite artists, filmmakers, and activists to share their own family photographs and expand our notions of family as seen through queer and trans eyes. This multigenerational, multicultural group will take up the project of VINTAGE in assembling a communal queer family album and a progressive, inclusive vision of family across space and time.

“Black Families Through Queer Eyes” is co-presented by Bi.org, Black Public Media, the Documentary Forum at CCNY, NewFest, QUEER|ART|FILM, Revry.tv, Sisters in Cinema, Visual AIDS, and others.

When you RSVP to this event, you will receive the time-limited link to VINTAGE: Families of Value and a Zoom link to the panel discussion and Family Pictures USA event.