The past two months have been exciting for the Black Fire film series. On February 3, Express Newark’s Community Media Center, in partnership with The Newark Museum of Art, screened eight shorts from the Black Fire series:

• Accidental Athlete 

• Gospel Hill

• Hampton

• Black Bus Stop

• Fastest Man in the State

• How Can I Ever Be Late 

• We Demand

• Sugarcoated Arsenic 

This program was presented as part of Express Newark’s year-long programming for its annual theme, “Aliveness,” and its film exhibition Things We Do in the Dark: Cinematic Experiments in Kinship, curated by Express Newark Curator-in-Residence, Farrah Rahaman. The exhibition, which opened on February 2 and will close on July 31, 2023, features over twenty video-based works from Black and Indigenous artists who engage in experimental, collaborative, and political approaches to contemporary filmmaking. Our film Pride is one of the feature works.

We were also happy to screen Gospel Hill at the First Look film festival in New York. Held at the Museum of Moving Images, the festival was great and the response to the film was wonderful.

Lastly, we continue to create art. On March 17th and 18th, we filmed our latest project. Here’s some pictures from the shoot.

As always, we are so grateful for those who support the work!

On Thursday, February 2nd, as part of its Aliveness series, Express Newark will host the opening reception for Willie Cole’s art interventions, Spirit Catcher and Lumen-less Lantern, two large-scale, chandelier-like sculptures that address Newark’s water crisis and our planet’s plastic problem, and Things We Do in the Dark: Cinematic Experiments in Kinship, a film exhibition curated by cultural worker Farrah Rahaman that showcases over twenty video-based works by Black and Indigenous artists whose works explore the critical themes of racial solidarity, Black radical protest, and communal healing.

These featured activations are part of Willie Cole’s Artist Residency, and Farrah Rahaman’s Curatorial Residency, for 2022-2023.

The opening reception will be held from 6-8 PM at Express Newark, located at 54 Halsey Street, 2nd Floor, Newark, NJ 07102.