IU Cinema series to explore black cinematic imaginations of space

Space travel and black culture will come together in the IU Cinema series “Black Sun, White Moon: Exploring Black Cinematic Imaginations of Space.” 

Starting this Saturday, the series will feature three different films relating to space travel, black communities and socioeconomic inequality. It also celebrates the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s moon landing. The event is also sponsored by the Black Film Center/Archive and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean studies.  

The first three films of the series will start at 7 p.m. Feb. 23. The first film, “Space is the Place,” is a 1974 Afro-futurist science fiction film that follows two space explorers who discover a new planet and transform it into a colony for black people. 

The second film, “Afronauts,” is a 2014 drama about a group of Zambian villagers who build a rocket in an attempt to put the first African woman on the moon. 

“Polly One,” the final film, is a 2018 six-minute silent short on the 2017 total solar eclipse as seen from Saluda, North Carolina, where the eclipse reached 99 percent totality. 

The second part of the series features the 2019 film “Fly Me to the Moon” and begins at 4 p.m. March 24 in the IU Libraries Moving Image Archive Screening Room in Wells Library. 

This is the first time the film will be shown to the public. It shows the affect of mining bauxite for space travel on the Caribbean landscape. “Fly Me to the Moon” director Esther Figueroa will hold a discussion open to the public after the screening.

All screenings in the series are free, but ticketed. 

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