IN CINEMA

Sunday, June 15th at 7PM
Pride at Maysles: THE WORLD BEFORE ME; VINTAGE • FAMILIES OF VALUE; POP-UP EXHIBITION and 30TH ANNIVERSARY PARTY
Co-presented with Family Pictures USA

PRIDE at MAYSLES: THE WORLD BEFORE ME

Cass Arrington, 2022, 6 min.

Cass Arrington tracks the multi-generational experiences of growing up queer across two generations of family history.

PRIDE at MAYSLES: VINTAGE • FAMILIES OF VALUE

Thomas Allen Harris, 1995, 72 minutes

VINTAGE • FAMILIES OF VALUE is an experimental documentary that looks at three African American families through the eyes of siblings who are lesbian and gay—including the filmmaker and his brother, Lyle Ashton Harris. Anni Cammett, Anita and Adrian Jones are sisters and mothers forging their vision of matriarchy out of a turbulent history of love and betrayal. Paul and Vanessa Eaddy are the only two gay siblings of a family of eight from Baltimore, Maryland. However, internalized homophobia has prevented them from forming a friendship. Over the course of five years, the Harris brothers, the Eaddys and the Cammett/Jones sisters use camcorders and Super 8 film to construct frank and sometimes raw autobiographical portraits of their respective families in VINTAGE • FAMILIES OF VALUE.

+ Post-screening discussion with director Thomas Allen Harris, Cass Arrington, and Michael Henry Adams! Celebration of Vintage • Families of Value 30th Anniversary and pop-up exhibition of Harris' House of Haizlip to follow!

Cassidy Arrington is a nonbinary multi-media artist based in and from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Arrington’s artwork centers intimacy, wilderness, and transience in queer and Black coming of age. Their poetry has been featured in Yale University Art Gallery, WORD Performance Poetry at Yale, Healing Verse Poetry Line, and more. They have shown photographs, poems, and films at Scribe Video Center, William Way LGBT Community Center, Sinister Wisdom Literary Journal, and beyond. Arrington graduated from Yale College with a BA in Ethnicity, Race, & Migration Studies in 2023, and in 2024, they became a resident artist at the TILT Institute for the Contemporary Image and the Painted Bride Art Center.

Thomas Allen Harris, an award-winning Director, is the President of Chimpanzee Productions, a company dedicated to producing unique audio-visual experiences that illuminate the Human Condition and the search for identity, family, and spirituality, including feature length films, performances and multimedia productions.

Chimpanzee’s innovative and acclaimed films - Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People (2014), Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela (2005), E Minha Cara/That’s My Face (2001), VINTAGE – Families of Value (1995), - have received critical acclaim at international film festivals including Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, Frameline, FESPACO, Outfest, and Sithengi/Cape Town and have been broadcast on PBS, the Sundance Channel, ARTE, as well as CBC, Swedish broadcasting Network and New Zealand Television. Reviews of Harris’ work have appeared in The New York Times, Time Magazine, Jay Z’s Life and Times, Variety The Advocate, among others. His last film started its theatrical run at Film Forum in New York City, August 27th 2014.

Michael Henry Adams is an historian and preservation activist living in Harlem. A fine arts graduate of the University of Akron, Michael trained in Columbia University‘s graduate historic preservation program and last year was awarded the Columbia Preservation Alumni Historic Preservation Leadership award. He also studied English country houses at the Attingham Summer School. His books include Harlem, Lost and Found; An Architectural and Social History, 1765-1915, Monacelli Press, 2001 and Style and Grace; African Americans at Home, Bullfinch, 2002. Currently he’s at work on the forthcoming Homo Harlem, A Chronicle of Lesbian and Gay Life in the African American Cultural Capital, 1915-1995. He is a passionate supporter of historic preservation and conceived Save Harlem Now!, enjoys Harlem restaurants, and espouses equality and justice for all.