• Image courtesy the artist and Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York / Rome
  • Image courtesy the artist and Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York / Rome
  • Image courtesy the artist and Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York / Rome

Dreams Are Colder Than Death

In Conversation

  • Leigh Raiford is associate professor and H. Michael and Jeanne Williams Chair of African American Studies at UC Berkeley, where she also serves as affiliate faculty in the Program in American Studies and the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies.

Fifty years after Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, a collective of African American filmmakers, artists, and intellectuals reflect on the goals and ambitions of the civil rights movement and where things stand today. Jafa arranges the thoughts of this eloquent chorus into a profoundly moving score that also elucidates the origin of the concept of blackness and the experience of being black in the US in the twenty-first century. Elliptical portraits of the speakers are combined with landscapes, street scenes, and archival images in this urgent elegy. Featuring Kara Walker, Fred Moten, Kathleen Cleaver, and Charles Burnett, among others.

FILM DETAILS 
Cinematographer
  • Arthur Jafa
  • Hans Charles
  • Malik Hassan Sayeed
Print Info
  • Color
  • DCP
  • 52 mins
Source
  • Gavin Brown’s enterprise
Preceded By

The Cry of Jazz

Edward O. Bland, United States, 1959

FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Edward O. Bland
  • Nelam Hill
  • Mark Kennedy
Cinematographer
  • Hank Starr
  • Jonathan Chernoble
Language
  • English
Print Info
  • B&W
  • Digital
  • 34 mins
source
  • Matt Rogers
Additional Info
  • Restored by Anthology Film Archives with support from The Film Foundation.