Arthur Jafa: Dreams are Colder than Death

Join us for a screening of Dreams are Colder than Death (2014), an experimental documentary/essay film by acclaimed filmmaker and artist Arthur Jafa that reflects on the legacy of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and offers a profound and nuanced rumination on the question: “What does it mean to be black in America today?” Jafa interweaves and layers disparate and haunting imagery with interviews with some of the most significant and influential contemporary thinkers about black arts, black studies, and black experience, including artists Kara Walker and Wangechi Mutu, poet Fred Moten, filmmaker Charles Burnett, professors Hortense Spillers and Saidiya Hartman, musician Flying Lotus, and more.

Following the screening, curator Deena Chalabi will be in conversation with cultural studies scholar Stephen Best to discuss Jafa’s work.

Participants

Deena Chalabi, Barbara and Stephan Vermut Associate Curator of Public Dialogue

Stephen Best, associate professor of English at University of California, Berkeley

Arthur Jafa’s Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death is featured in Nothing Stable under Heaven on Floor 7.