Mnemonic Aberrations: Black Feminism and the Counter-Poetics of Rhythm in Experimental Short Film and Video (1968-1998) By Ayanna Dozier Department of Art History & Communication Studies, McGill University, Montréal, QC August 2020 A dissertation submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ©Ayanna Dozier 2020 Table of Contents Abstract(s) ..................................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................... 5 Declaration .................................................................................................................................... 7 List of Illustrations........................................................................................................................ 8 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 12 Methods..................................................................................................................................... 20 Literature Review.................................................................................................................. 26 The Selection ........................................................................................................................ 41 Screenings ............................................................................................................................. 46 Archives ................................................................................................................................ 48 Location ................................................................................................................................ 50 Theoretical Approach ............................................................................................................... 54 Time as a Life Process .......................................................................................................... 68 Chapter Outlines ....................................................................................................................... 73 Notes ......................................................................................................................................... 79 Part One: Histories ..................................................................................................................... 88 1_Kinship with the Dead: Agency and the Spectral Power of Affection in Camille Billops and James V. Hatch Archives and Suzanne, Suzanne (1982) ................................................. 89 The Camille Billops & James V. Hatch Archives at Emory University ................................. 100 A Dose of the Spiritual World in the Archives ....................................................................... 112 The Specter’s Power of Affection in Beloved (1987) and Atlantic is a Sea of Bones (2017) 120 Suzanne, Suzanne .................................................................................................................... 134 Notes ....................................................................................................................................... 154 2_Mothering Ourselves: I Am Somebody (1970) and Madeline Anderson’s Early Film Beginnings .................................................................................................................................. 163 Fabulating My Methods of Approach ..................................................................................... 170 The Gossiper ....................................................................................................................... 176 As the World Turns: New York City, Direct Cinema and the Avant-Garde (1954-1964) ..... 178 Black Journal (1967-1969) ..................................................................................................... 188 Just Like You (1968) ............................................................................................................... 194 I Am Somebody (1970) and the Struggle for Equitable Labor Recognition ........................... 197 Notes ....................................................................................................................................... 211 3_Crafting a Collective Commons: The Intersecting Narratives of Black Feminist Experimental Film and Video Artists (1970-1998) ................................................................ 215 1 Water Ritual #1: An Urban Rite of Purification (1979) ......................................................... 222 Something New: Women and Experimentation in the L.A. Rebellion (1970-1989).............. 233 Against Representation: Sankofa and the Colonial Eye (1981-1993) .................................... 245 Playback Time: Video and the New Queer Aesthetic (1986-1998) ....................................... 254 Background ......................................................................................................................... 255 Aesthetics ............................................................................................................................ 261 Topics .................................................................................................................................. 263 Distribution and Exhibition Strategies .................................................................................... 268 Notes ....................................................................................................................................... 282 Part Two: Aesthetics and Analysis .......................................................................................... 292 4_Conjuring Caliban’s Woman: Julie Dash’s Four Women (1975), Praise House (1991) and the Ritual Body .......................................................................................................................... 293 “Conjure” Cinema and Caliban’s Woman .............................................................................. 302 Four Women............................................................................................................................ 314 The Ritual Body ...................................................................................................................... 327 Praise House ........................................................................................................................... 331 Notes ....................................................................................................................................... 349 5_Freedom From the Memory of Man: The Aesthetics and Analysis of the Counter-Poetics of Rhythm in Black Feminist Film and Video Art ................................................................. 354 Mnemonic Aberrations ........................................................................................................... 364 Dreaming Rivers (1988) ......................................................................................................... 371 Sapphire and the Slave Girl (1995) ........................................................................................ 385 Memory Tracks (1997) ............................................................................................................ 396 Notes ....................................................................................................................................... 408 Conclusion: “This is the Remix” ............................................................................................. 412 Toward an Archival Remix ..................................................................................................... 414 Conclusion: Contemporary Exhibition and Screening Tactics ............................................... 416 Appendix: Figures..................................................................................................................... 426 Film Citations ............................................................................................................................ 478 References .................................................................................................................................. 484 2 Abstract Mnemonic Aberrations both analyzes and narrates the history of the emergence, production, and distribution of Black feminist experimental film and video across the United States and the United Kingdom from 1968-1998. I construct my analytical approaches to reading film through the underexamined film scholarship of Afro-Jamaican Philosopher, Sylvia Wynter. Mnemonic aberrations names the specific type of memory work these film and video works produce in their centering of Black womanhood as a fugitive to colonial temporality. Black feminist experimental film and video do not merely portray memory but rather strategically make and deploy it, bringing into our present being the temporal past of Black reinvented lives. The turn to experimentation in film and video, then, is expansively mobilized by these film and video makers for all the ways in which film generates affect and can disrupt our cognitive schema. Due to these patterns of experimental and cultural approach to film and video making, I employ