The Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill and the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center have partnered to present a two-day Black Film Festival, starting Friday at the museum with "Neptune Frost," an award-winning, genre-bending feature film by Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman.
Fresh from screenings at the Cannes, Toronto, Sundance, and New York Film Festivals, "Neptune Frost" is a sci-fi punk musical reflecting the filmmakers' Afrofuturist vision, defined as the exploration of "the intersection of the African diaspora culture with science and technology."
The film is set in the hilltops of Burundi, where the metallic radioactive ore coltan is mined under harsh conditions for meager wages. Neptune, an "intersex runaway," played by both Elvis Ngabo and Cheryl Isheja, and Matalusa (Kaya Free) join with a group of escaped coltan miners to form an anti-colonialist computer hacker collective trying to take over the country's authoritarian regime.
Of the rebels, A.O. Scott, in his New York Times review, said, "Surrounded by political violence, economic injustice and cultural alienation, they try to secure a space where imagination and solidarity can flourish. The challenges are formidable, but their commitment is part of what makes 'Neptune Frost' moving as well as mind-bending."
Friday's program will begin at 7 p.m. with a curator's tour of the exhibition "Another Justice: US is Them." A reception will follow on the terrace at 7:30, and the film will be introduced and screened outdoors on the museum's meadow at 8.
The festival will continue on Friday, Aug. 26, with a showing of "Kinks, Locs, and Love" and a panel discussion on Black hair. The 46-minute film, directed by Lawrence Green, documents the transition to natural hair of women of African descent, primarily in the Washington, D.C., area. It also focuses on the natural hair community through events, businesses, fashion figures, and bloggers.
A tour of the exhibition "Another Justice: US is Them" will kick off the evening at 5. A reception will happen at 5:30, and the film will be shown at 6 in the museum's theater. A panel discussion at 6:45 with the dermatologist Achiamah Osei-Tutu and others to be announced will examine the importance of Black hair to health, sense of identity, community, and culture.
Tickets to each program are $15, $5 for museum members and friends of the child care center.
