Tuuesday, March 16, 1971
Page Two
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Black Liberation Week:
Cultural excellence
Tuesday, March 16 - Sympo-
slum: Technological Needs of
the Black World-Don Coleman
(School of Engineering); Char-
les Kidd (School -of Public
Health) and others-A&D Aud.,
9-11 a.m. (no charge).
Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones)
and the Spirit 'House Movers
and Olantunji-His "Drums of
Passion" and His African Dance
Troupe. Hill Aud., 8 p.m. $4.75;
$3.75; $2.75; $1.75.
Wednesday, March 17-Harold
Cruse: "On . . . Black Culture"
(Part I), 1017 Angell Hall, 12-2
p.m. (no charge).
Poetry Reading: So. African
Poet K. Kgositsile-plus Uni-
versity's Dave Wesley and Cow-
boy Walker, Multipurpose Room,
UGLI,:3:30-5:30 (no charge). -
Symposium: Black Education
-Moderator: Harry Mial
(Northside School, Howard Ful-
ler (Malcolm X Liberation Uni-
versity, Greensboro); J a m e s
Garrett (Center for Black Edu-
cation, D.C.)-Ann Arbor Com-
nfunity Center, 7:30 p.m. (no
charge).
Thursday, March 18-Sympo-
sium:, Black Art-Jon Lockard
(Ann Arbdr), Charles McGee
(Detroit), James Lee (Detroit),
Al Hinton (Kalamazoo), Regi-
nald Gammon (Kalamazoo),
Mahler Ryder -(Providence, R.)
-A&D Aud., 9-11 a.m. (no
charge).
Poet Robert Hayden - Rack-
hani Amphitheater. 4-5:30 p.m.
(no charge).
Val Gray Ward and the Ku-
uinba Workshop of Chicago-
program of dance music and
poetry plus University's Carol
Washington and Co. In excerpts
from Barry Pugh's Black Jewel,
plus Bethel AME Church's Youth
Choir directed by University's
Van King - Union Ballroom, 8
p.m, '$2.
Frday March 19-Day-long
Symposium : The Black Move-
ment: Ideologies and Issues -
Robert Williams (formerly of
RNA), James Turner (African
Center, Cornell), P. Chike On-
wuachi (African Studies, How-
ard)-Schedule forthcoming (no
charge).
Contemporary Jazz Quintet-
Union Ballroom (note change of
-location), 8 p.m., $2.
Saturday, March 20-National
Black Theatre of Harlem, di-
rected by Barbara Ann Teer, in
their famous Black Ritual "Re-
gain Our Strength and Reclaim
Our Power"-plus University's
Diane Borgus-Union Ballroom,
8 p.m., $3 (afternoon perform-
ance to be announced).
* Sundayr, March 21 - Black
Film Festival-Films and discus-
sions on "Black Perspectives on
the Media"-Clff Frazier (Com-
munity Film Workshop, N.Y.),
Bill Greaves (Producer/Direc-
tor), Gil Maddox ("Profiles in
Black"), Lois Owens (Project
BAIT's 'For My People')-Aud.
A, Angell Hall, 1-3:30 p.m. and
7:30-10:30 p.m. (no charge).
Ufamaa Dinner featuring Pio-
neer High's Black Students in a
program of music, poetry and
dance-4-7 p.m. (location to be
announced).
Just as Black History Week
heralds the accomplishments of
peoples of African origin and
descent, so Black Liberation
Week highlights our struggle
and our determination to reach
our goals in the shortest time
possible. The artists who will
appear are those whose primary
aim is to teach rather than to
entertain..
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11 a.m.-9 p.m.; Sun. 1-5
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By JUANITA ANDERSON
Black music is not merely a
stylized use of rhythm. Rather
it is a means of conveying a
black message. It is the expres-
sion of experience - of pain,
suffering, joy and inspiration.
The Harambee Singers of At-
lanta Georgia exhibited this ex-
pression Sunday night in a con-
cert kicking off Black Libera-
tion Week.
Stemming from African ori-
gins of voice inflection and the
gospel tradition of employing
the feet and hands as the base
of rhythm ,their music is far
from the Motown realm of mu-
sic as a commercial venture.
Instead, it is music of the black
revolution, a giving of the total
soul in expressing black goals
and values, without regard to
white concepts of what music:
should be.
"We talk to our people through
music. We can't say it is en-
tertainment because it's gotta
be more than that. You can go
to movies f o r entertainment,"
explained Mattie Casey, one of
the five Harambee singers.
She explained that many
things one can find in a song
are unattainable in anything
else.
Their music' tells of African
history, explaining that black
people are the oldest of man-,
kind and the builders of the
world.
"My soul has run deep like
the rivers/Older than the flow
of human bloo d in a human
vein/I built my hut on the Con-
go/I looked upon the Nile and
raised the pyramids/I've seen
the Mississippi's muddy busom
turn golden in the sunset," the
Harambee singers explain in the
song I've Known Rivers.
Black people cannot be con-
cerned with women's liberation
because they are trying to be
liberated as a whole, explained
Jackie Howard, the lowest voice
in the group.
"We are talking in terms of
building a nation, so we have to
think in terms of building fam-
ilies. Ain't no two of the same
thing ever gonna build no na-
tion," she explained.
Hence the writing of a song
dedicated to b 1 a c k men, the
backbone of the black nation:
"Joe Willie where you been so
AAFF:
By JOHN ALLEN
By now, the Ninth Ann Ar-
bor Film Festival seems like an-
cient history. Saturday's pro-
gramming was an improvement
on Friday's, but the first three
days of the week still seem, in
retrospect, to h a v e been the
best; this, despite the screenings
on Friday and Saturday of four
of the seven prizewinners. More
on the winners in a moment.
On Saturday's plus-side of
the ledger was a brief but lovely
film called Navajo Rain Chant
that combined a soundtrack of a
chant with metamorphosing im-
agery of desert bluffs and light-
ning flashes as well as the de-
signs of Navajo crafts.
There was a 1 s o the second
Richard Myers film, Akbar -
an interview with a young black
man who sat in front of the
camera and told his particular
truth about America. Akbar
took a prize, perhaps f o r its
multiple levels of intimacy as
its subject spoke alternately to
the cameraman and filmmaker,
to the camera, and ultimately to
the invisible audience.
Of note also were Blank and
Gerson's film on the Cajun peo-
ple of Louisiana, Spend it All,
and an exercise in computer
graphics by Lillian Schwartz,
and Ken Kowlton called Pixilla-
tion. During the afternoon there
were two films of some dimen-
sion - Two American Audienc-
es by Mark Woodcock and News-
reel of Dreams Parts I and II
by Stan Vanderbeek. The Wood-
cock film was a seminar with
Godard with clips from La
Chinoise, and t h e Vanderbeek
film was a stunning evocation
of the life and death forces at
work in our culture - all fil-
tered through a brilliant eye for
color and pacing.
The real excitement, of course,
was attendant upon the Sunday
night programs: repeat screen-
ings of the winning films and
others deemed of special inter-
est by the judges. W i t h the
three films that were granted
top awards of $300 each there
can be no quarrel (see box.) All
of them were major undertak-
ings and major accomplish-
ments.
For this reviewer, however -
and for m a n y in the Sunday
night audiences who booed the
announcement of their being
honored with prizes - the re-
Winners of Ninth AAFF
$300 each:
Breathing Together: Revolu-
tion of the Electric Family,
by Morley Markson
This is the Home of Mrs. Le-
vant Graham, by New Thing
Flick Co.
Runs Good, by Pat O'Neill....
$200 each:
Putting the Babies Back, Part
II, by Neal White
Bleu Shut, by Robert Nelson
Selective Service System, by
Warren Haack
$100
Akbar, by Richard Myers
maining four winners were
choices not so easily under-
stood.
Putting the Babies Back, Part
II, is a six-and-a-half minute
film of a poor-looking man
wandering about in a field be-
hind which rise rather elegant.
houses. The man barks, pants;
and whines'in ways suggestive
of various emotional states. In
fairness one should mention
that this won top honors at the
Fifth National Student Film
Festival in New York last fall
as well as winning $200 here in
Ann Arbor Sunday night. But it
is still not clear to me what ad-
vance, if any, the film repre-
sents over other Theatre-of-the-
Absurd works of a similar na-
ture by Beckett and Ionesco
which, in addition to having
been done first, manage to work
better - since the poignancy of
perfectly well on stage, perhaps
the man-as-animal image is not
so telling on the screen where
the blending of the human and
non-human is more of an ev-
eryday affair.
Robert Nelson's Bleu Shut,
which also took $200, was also
found fit for, screening at a New
York film festival last year -
t h e Eighth Annual (non-stu-
dent at Lincoln Center. Except
for Nelson's reputation as a pro-
lific and sometimes acute film-
maker making jabs at cultural
shibboleths, it is hard to under-
stand this particular choice as
a prizewinner. Mockprofound, as
a genre, is interesting only as its
mockeries are themselves tinged
with a little profundity. Bleu
Shut was a pleasant pasttime
and audience-participation ven-
ture, but surely there were more
deserving films screened.
Selective Service System by
Warren Haack took $200 as well.
While there was gut-churning
authenticity to this film showing
a young man shoot a hole in
his foot with a rifle to avoid the
draft, there was an unequal
measure of gratuitous morbidity
about the whole idea of filming
the event which I, for one, found
extremely distasteful. At the
very least it seemed unfortunate
to give the filmmaker $200 if
Myers's Akbar was only to be
What makes a winner?
given $100 - since Akbar was
greater in scope, and largely
concerned with the same theme:
those dysfunctions in our society
and our selves which are pain-
ful and a source of inexcusable
waste.
For what it is worth (whic
is immensely little), my own
choices for best-of-festival films
would have been as follows: the
three that took top prizes, plus
Cosmos by Jordan Belson, Na-
tural Habitat by Ralph Arlyck
(whose film, Sean, was one of
the charms of the 1968 AAFF)4
A Well-Spent Life by Les Blank
and Skip Gerson, and probably
Vanderbeek's N e w sr e e1 of
Dreams. There are five or six
more I wouldn't mind owning
prints of, but I won't bore you
with the details.
The 9th AAFF was generall
of a very high level. The bores
were crashing bores, admittedly,
but the good films were good
enough to fill up all the avail-
able space in one's storerooms
of memory. It was a festival that
suffered slightly from a falling-
off of excitement after the first
three days: but to say so is
mostly to admit to some measure
of saturation, not necessarily to
make an objective judgment of
the quality of the films or the
curve of energy traced by the
programming.
A great many people worked
longer hours than I, producing?
screening, handling, and man-
aging the films and the festival.
I, for one, had a hell of a good
time, and am already looking
forward to the Tenth Ann Arbor
Film Festival--which ought to
-Daily-Tom Gottlieb
DON L. LEE, speaking in the Union last night as a part of Black
Liberation Week.
long/Say I love you Joe Willie,
come let's make a home."
Never sparing their voices for
the sake of peace and quiet, the
Harambee Singers vocalized a
strong attack against black op-
pression in a song to the tune-
of Battle Hymn of the Repub-
lic:
"Mine .eyes have seen injus-
tice in each city town and state/
your jails are filled with black
men and your courts are white
with hate/It is you who are sub-
versive and the killers of ourt
dream/in your silent world of
boundaries it is you who are
extreme/youtnever takehyour
earmuffs off or listen when we
scream, but the movement's
movin' on.
"Move on over or we'll move
on over you," they address them-
selves to the white oppressors.
One of the most moving songs
presented was written for black
children attending the Pan-Af-
rican Work School in Atlanta,
which the Harambee Singers
founded as a means of giving
black children a black educa-
tion.
The song is a means of instill-
ing pride in black children who
are constantly confronted with
white standards of culture and
beauty.
"I am black and I have beau-
ty/What a rare thing am I/To
have curls like a larhb, to be
black and beautiful. Parents
check my history and you'll see
lots of goodies that only you and
I can claim.
- --
"r
Want to leave school for a couple years?
Join the PEACE CORPS
Representative speaking at School
of Education 10-12, March 17
RAP ROOM
NOTE: Now taking applications from students with only one or
two years of college. Faculty invited too. Refreshments.
NOMINATED FOR
ACADEMY
AWARDSN
BST PICTURE
BEST DIRECTOR
BEST ACTRESS GP
BEST ACTOR
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR,
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
BEST ORIGINAL MUSICAL SCORE
Al MacGraw * Ryan O'Neal 603 E. Liberty
AHOWARD 6 MINSKY-ARTHUR HILLER Production DIAL 5-6290
John Marley&Ray Milland Doors Open 2:45
Shows at 1,3,5,7,9
Free List Suspended
DOUBLE FEATURE--STARTS TOMORROW
They Clld them "I unhesitatingly recommend
'The Virgin Soldiers'! An eve-
ning of rich, very real and
compassionate entertainment!
As much an anti-war film as
M*A*S*H! I liked it very
but not much."
forlong. -Bernard Drew
PpesenXDIE WMPIPTH Porum
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