GENE SISKEL FILM CENTER

Madeleine Hunt - Ehrlich: Speculative Archives

Expired March 29, 2021 4:59 AM
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Madeleine Hunt - Ehrlich’s rich and often surreal works blend narrative and documentary to explore the private worlds of Black women. Rooted in archival and field research, Hunt - Ehrlich’s practice uses abstraction as a mode of resistance in depicting subjects deprived of self-autonomy under the exploitative gaze of the colonial camera. In these four films, she relays a fragmentary history of the United Order of Tents, a semi-clandestine organization of Black women founded in the 1860s; looks at her grandmother’s life and musical compositions; interrupts the white gaze of the Western canon; and meditates on a series of anonymous photographs of Black life, speculating on the inner lives of photographers and subjects.


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Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich Lecture and Conversation

March 25, 7:00 p.m. CST

This event will have live captions.

Spit on the Broom is a surrealist documentary of the United Order of Tents, a clandestine organization of Black women founded in the 1860s. Weaving together over 100 years of newspaper articles, oral histories, and mythic stories, the film introduces the group’s history but keeps its most guarded secrets.

  • Year
    2019
  • Runtime
    12 minutes
  • Language
    English
  • Country
    United States
  • Filmmaker
    Madeleine Hunt - Ehrlich