News

The long-delayed Academy Museum of Motion Pictures looks like it is finally ready for its close-up.

Ava DuVernay, Ryan Murphy and Jason Blum will be spearheading plans for the gala opening on September 25, 2021 as part of a weeklong program of celebrations leading to its official unveiling for the public September 30. Murphy and Blum are both Museum Trustees, while DuVernay is an Academy governor who has also been lending her consultation on the upcoming 2022 exhibition Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971.

The museum has also announced the establishment of two new annual awards that will be presented for the first time at the gala. Film legend Sophia Loren will receive the inaugural Visionary Award, honoring an artist or scholar whose extensive body of work has advanced the art of cinema. Ethiopian independent filmmaker, professor and author Haile Gerima will receive the Vantage Award, honoring an artist or scholar who has helped to contextualize...

The fourth in the ongoing series of the Chicago screenings of the L.A. Rebellion touring film series will continue on Thursday May 9 with a screening of Haile Gerima’s powerful 1979 film Bush Mama. The film, which stars Barbara O. Jones, was made by Gerima (Sankofa, Teza, Adwa) as his thesis project when he was a graduate film student at UCLA; one of the cinematographers on the project was future film director Charles Burnett, whose film, My Brother’s Wedding, was screened last week. The film deals with a young wife who increasingly becomes radicalized by the obstacles she faces when her Army veteran husband is arrested and imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. The film...