IN CINEMA

THE SOUND BEFORE THE FURY
Tuesday, April 1st at 7PM
Tickets: $15 General Admission / $7 Reduced Price

Lola Frederich + Martin Sarrazac, 2014, 89 minutes

In 1972, a year after the infamous Attica Prison Uprising in New York state, saxophonist Archie Shepp released "Attica Blues," an ambitious and deeply-moving avant-garde album mixing blues, Gospel, R&B, and soul. Forty years later, Shepp—who had by-then developed into one of the leading figures of the free jazz scene—revived the work, assembling a new crop of young musicians for an artistic retreat in the South of France. This documentary follows the group from through the rehearsal process to the performance at the 2014 edition of the Jazz à la Villette festival, juxtaposing contemporary footage with archival images of Attica itself, as well as extensive interviews with Shepp exploring the aesthetic and political elements of the piece. 

This screening is in continuation with our exhibition of photographer Accra Shepp’s series “EVERYDAY/ALL DAY – CITY IN ACTION,” which we began showing in February 2025. Viewers will be invited to view Shepp’s photography after the screening. 

Post-screening Q+A with Accra Shepp and filmmakers.

The pandemic sits like a cairn marking a trail through our collective memory. The outward aspects of this marker are not momentous, just a haphazard pile of discarded worries and fears, concern about cloth masks versus paper masks, dim recollections of isolation and ambulance sirens, the smell of hand sanitizer. It does, however, mark a threshold in contemporary history where we collectively faced our responsibility to each other – to reflect upon the idea long denied by social norms that our own personal welfare is connected to the welfare of not only our neighbors but also those we hardly know and especially those we try to not to know.

This connectedness came into startlingly sharp focus in the aftermath of three murders, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. The video documentation of George Floyd’s last moments in particular caused a spasm that was felt globally. It was a spasm of our collective humanity watching one person undo another without justification without remorse.

My images of this spasm in New York City form the “Justice” chapter of my multi-part project, “The Covid Journals.” It was the pandemic that provided the context for our ability to perceive something we had long tried not to. In our isolation, no one could escape the obvious and shameful brutality encapsulated in the act. It laid bare the history of old and senseless racial hatreds, but in a truly remarkable turn of events everyone united to reject it. My images reflect the first few months of this historic response.

— Accra Shepp