Homegoings Film Screening + Discussion

Man in a black suit outside of a funeral home in New York

Image courtesy of California Newsreel

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Paying homage to Black funerary practices, artist and professor Angela Hennessy and poet, author, and public theologian Marvin K. White will host The Quiet Hours, a series of community undertakings and collective mournings. As grief and joy orbit each other, we will gather for meditation, writing, and ritual informed by Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence.

Series dates: May 27, August 5, September 16.

The August and September workshops will consist of writing, reflection, conversation, and looking at specific works of art in relation to death and grief. 

About the film

Homegoings (2013, documentary, 51 minutes) Through the eyes of funeral director Isaiah Owens, the beauty and grace of African American funerals are brought to life. Filmed at Owens Funeral Home in New York City’s historic Harlem neighborhood, Homegoings takes an up-close look at the rarely seen world of undertaking in the Black community, where funeral rites draw on a rich palette of tradition, history, and celebration. Combining cinéma vérité with intimate interviews and archival photographs, the film paints a portrait of the dearly departed, their grieving families, and a man who sends loved ones “home.”

Cautionary note: the film deals with issues of death and dying. 

About the workshop leaders

Angela Hennessy is an Oakland-based artist and associate professor at California College of the Arts where she teaches courses on visual and cultural narratives of death in contemporary art. Through writing, studio work, and performance, her practice questions assumptions about death and the dead themselves. She uses a spectrum of color and other phenomena of light to expose mythologies of identity. Ephemeral and celestial forms are constructed by everyday gestures of domestic labor — washing, wrapping, stitching, weaving, brushing, and braiding.

Marvin K. White, MDiv, is a poet, playwright, essayist, preacher, teacher, and speaker who articulates a vision of social, technological, prophetic, and creative justice.

Ticket info

Free. First come, first served. Capacity is limited. 

Contact info

Public Programs
publicprograms@famsf.org

415.750.7694

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