Co-presented by FilmScene’s African Diaspora Committee, the Out of the Archive series highlights overlooked work from Black filmmakers with a monthly screening and discussion of restored and archival work. Arrive early for a pre-show meal! This season is A Global Lens with films from around the world and throughout the diaspora, showcasing a diversity of cultures, genres, techniques, and eras.

Arrive hungry at 6:15pm for a pre-screening meal | Post-screening discussion

Algerian novelist and translator Assia Djebar turned to film for the second and final time in her career in order to recapitulate the colonization of the Maghreb using French newsreels. The film employs montage to search for the truth in these, “images of a killing gaze,” a truth which they pointedly do not show—the resistance behind the mask. The poetic essay film is a powerful recontextualization of propaganda that recovers the history of the Zerda ceremony with a soundtrack by Moroccan composer Ahmed Essyad that brings together multi-vocal chants and experimental music to form a furious swan song to colonial violence.