Black Arts Series Screening

A prescreening series leading up to Before and After Home (May 7). These filmmaker-curated evenings bring films into conversation through collective viewing and reflection, beginning with curator introductions and concluding discussion. 

When: April 16, 23, and 30  

Time: 6 – 8:45pm 

Location: Mini Cinema in the VCR (EV 2.705), 1515 Ste. Catherine St. W. 

April 16 — Don’t Be Nice (2019), Max Powers — curated by Ra’anaa Ekundayo 

April 23 — Burning (2018), Lee Chang-dong — curated by Yves Lazarre 

April 30 — Quartier Mozart (1992), Jean-Pierre Bekolo — curated by Badewa Ajibade 

When: May 7, 5 – 8 pm 

Location: Concordia's Teaching Cinema (VA-114) 1395 Blvd. René-Lévesque Ouest.

5pm – Prescreening Mixer (with Matcha Pop-up + audio performance by Djeity) 

6pm – Screening of short-films

7:15pm – Talk back with filmmakers

Black Arts Series Coordinator and Curator: Adam Mbowe

Screening jury: Joys Sekpon, Stephane Wabo, and Kassandra Pierre

Graphic designer: Malik McCoy

In this visual essay strung along a clothesline, a narrator named Lavender tells the story of her mother, Jeanne, a Rwandese immigrant filled with hope. 

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Laura Kamugisha is a Montreal-based screenwriter, director and producer of Rwandan and Congolese origin. Her films explore notions of cultural identity, memories and intergenerational baggage through visual poetry. Her short films include Les Lavandières (2023), Trait d'Union (2020) and Mitochondrial (2019).  She is a graduate from Montréal’s Melhoppenheim School of Cinema and would describe her projects - and herself - as sensitive, stubborn and intuitive. She is part of the inaugural cohort of directors for Brown Girls Doc Mafia in 2021. 

As they get ready for the day, three young Black women discuss the public perception of their Blackness in relation to their personal journeys in cultivating a strong sense of self.

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Kourtney Jackson is a Toronto-based filmmaker and lens-based artist. Her artistic practice employs hybridized and experimental forms of storytelling that permeate interiorities of Black queer womanhood. In lieu of “representation” as a means for legibility, her work endeavours toward a repatriation of the self through somatic, spiritual, and ecological sensibilities. Her award-winning films have screened locally and internationally at festivals including TIFF Next Wave (Toronto), BlackStar Film Festival (Philadelphia), Sundance Film Festival, Ignite x Adobe (Utah), and the Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal (Montréal).

Told from the perspectives of 2SLGBTQ+ Afro-Indigenous leaders and activists, this short documentary intends to reimagine new possibilities for relationships between Blackness and Indigeneity which is rooted in solidarity and joy. In what we now call Canada, race relations are often viewed through a framework of Indigenous and European-settler binaries. Collective Resistance seeks to shift the focus and explore Black and Indigenous relations through a lens of social justice and radical kinship.

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Isak Vaillancourt is an award-winning director, producer, and multidisciplinary artist of Somali-French ancestry. His creative practice spans filmmaking, photography, and arts-based programming, exploring identity through the lens of Black healing, memory, and decolonization. He is the director and producer of the short films amplify (2020), Collective Resistance (2023), and Can You Feel It Now? (2025). 

The Image Machine, a supercomputer, aims to bring an end to humanity through a computer virus called Aphantasia. Once the Apple Test is completed, a person’s individuality will be erased, turning them into mindless and soulless beings that will later be deleted from reality.

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Yves Lazarre is a Haitian-Canadian filmmaker based in Montreal. His films exist between documentary observation and fictional construction, drawing from experimental film traditions. Raised around storytellers, he is interested in how stories are constructed, their metaphorical illustrations and what they reveal about existence, time, space and identity. His background in found footage has allowed him to develop and refine his skills in editing and sound design, which are often the foundation of his films.

Defiance, strength, bravery, love, and loss—these are the heart of Amelia’s story. More than just a tale about our protagonist, it is uniquely told through her perspective. As a married Nigerian woman living in relative poverty in the year 2002, desperate to have a child with her queer husband, Amelia’s views on queerness, trauma, and her unwavering fight for what she loves make her unequivocally singular from others in her community. Although she suffers significant losses, she ultimately becomes a testament to female power, determination, and sacrifice.

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Badewa Ajibade is a Nigerian film artist-researcher based in Montreal, Canada. Badewa was initially trained in filmmaking at the Toronto Film School in Toronto, Canada. He holds an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in film production from Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, where he researched loss, the subconscious, and variations in African queer sexuality. He is currently a PhD research-creation student in the Humanities program at Concordia University, studying the reclamation of queer Black bodies through dance and immersive cinema. He has written, directed and produced 6 short films in addition to a feature documentary. His work has been screened around the world and has earned him recognition, including three major awards at film festivals. 

Sirius, a lone star in the form of a dark-skinned man, has collapsed to earth. What little space he found on his host planet, he works to provide food and shelter. He and his wife, Angèle. One winter's day, the firmament calls him back, Sirius takes the long way leaving his wife behind. Their journey tells of the fertility of this sojourn for Sirius. The story that's often overlooked, that of how the earth fed the sky.

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Jean-Bastien Niyigaruye, originally from Burundi, lives in Montreal. Working mainly in the visual arts, he recently embarked on the adventure of cinema as a director and scriptwriter. For him, cinema is a continuation of his interest in drawing, painting and sculpture. As in these other media, Jean-Bastien seeks to construct and deconstruct image to create a free space for language and, ideally, to bring us closer to one another.