Black on Screen: A PLACE OF RAGE with Black Women Radicals

Join us for a screening of A PLACE OF RAGE (1991), Pratibha Parmar's award-winning documentary film that illuminates the contributions of Black women in the Civil Rights Movement through intimate interviews with trailblazing writers and leaders, including Angela Davis, June Jordan, Alice Walker, and Trinh T. Minh-ha. The film bridges Civil Rights era organizing with contemporary discourses on Black power, feminism, and queer rights.

Following the screening, director Pratibha Parmar will be in conversation with Dr. Jaimee A. Swift, Executive Director and Founder of Black Women Radicals and The School for Black Feminist Politics. Swift is the co-editor of We Are Each Other's Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities — an anthology that includes an interview with Parmar, who discusses her friendships with Davis, Jordan, and Walker. The anthology is a collaborative project between Black Women Radicals and the Asian American Feminist Collective and uplifts cross-racial and internationalist politics that address solidarity between Black and Asian feminists. We Are Each Other's Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities will be available for sale at the Schomburg Shop and a book signing will follow.

Runtime: 54 minutes

Pratibha Parmar’s films have shaped the politics of feminist, queer, and diasporic visual cultures for over four decades. From experimental shorts to activist documentaries and feature-length works, Parmar’s cinematic language operates as an act of visual justice. Her practice engages the image as a site of struggle—challenging the power relations that determine who is seen, how they are represented, and what forms of visual expression are made possible. Her films are a site of narrative transformation, where memory, activism, and artistic expression converge to resist erasure and imagine new futures. Pratibha is a published author and editor of several anthologies. The Institute of Contemporary Arts (London) and Sming Sming Books published, Our Eyes as Commonly Tender: Visual Justice in the Filmmaking of Pratibha Parmar in 2025.

Dr. Jaimee A. Swift (she/her) is the founder and executive director of Black Women Radicals and The School for Black Feminist Politics, two Black feminist advocacy organizations dedicated to uplifting and centering Black feminist activism around the world. She is the co-editor of We Are Each Other's Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities (Haymarket Books, 2025), a collaborative project between Black Women Radicals and the Asian American Feminist Collective, which envisions a cross-racial and internationalist politics that explicitly addresses solidarity between Black and Asian feminists. Drawing out lessons from the revolutionary work of movement forebearers—including the Combahee River Collective, Claudia Jones, Grace Lee Boggs, Yuri Kochiyama, Third World Women’s Alliance, and the Organization of Women of African and Asian Descent as well as struggles today—We Are Each Other’s Liberation offers an urgent call for the just future we might build together.

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

ACCESSIBLILITY

Accessibility requests can be made by e-mail accessibility@nypl.org.

ABOUT BLACK ON SCREEN

Black on Screen: A Century of Radical Visual Culture continues to amplify 100 years of local and transnational Black movement work and artistic evolution on film. Sourced from The Schomburg’s collection and others, it takes a kaleidoscopic look at Black life and expression across diasporas, rendering a range of storytelling traditions that incite and inspire Black world-building. The Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division (MIRS, pronounced “meers”) at the Schomburg Center collects and preserves audio and moving image (AMI) materials related to the experiences of people of African descent. The division has amassed nearly 400 collections, approximately 5,000 square feet, in a variety of formats, which captures the gestures and sounds of major historical, artistic and cultural moments and influencers. While the strength is the Black American holdings there is considerable Caribbean and African representation in the collection. Learn more about this division.

__________________________

FIRST COME, FIRST SEATED Events are free and open to all, but due to space constraints registration is requested. Registered guests are given priority check-in 15 to 30 minutes before start time. After the event starts all registered seats are released regardless of registration, so we recommend that you arrive early. We generally overbook to ensure a full house.

GUESTS Please note that holding seats in the Langston Hughes Auditorium is strictly prohibited and there is no food or drinks allowed anywhere in the Schomburg Center.

ACCESSIBLILITY Accessibility requests can be made by e-mail accessibility@nypl.org.

E-TRANSPORTATION NYPL policy prohibits electric transportation devices (e.g., motorbikes, e-bikes, e-scooters, e-skateboards) from being brought into or stored at library sites for any length of time, as this is the best way to keep our spaces & people safe.

AUDIO/VIDEO RECORDING Programs are photographed and recorded by the Schomburg Center. Attending this event indicates your consent to being filmed/photographed and your consent to the use of your recorded image for any all purposes of the New York Public Library.

PRESS Please send all press inquiries (photo, video, interviews, audio-recording, etc) at least 24-hours before the day of the program to Leah Drayton at leahdrayton@nypl.org.

Please note that personal and professional video recordings are prohibited without expressed consent.