The Lunder Institute for American Art: Fellows’ Clips
Followed by a Q+A with the filmmakers!
Join the Lunder Institute for American Art and the Colby College Museum of Art in celebrating the collaborative work of two Lunder Fellows, writer and visual artist Dell M. Hamilton and playwright and filmmaker Angela Counts. Three of their works will be screened, after which Hamilton and Counts will lead a discussion with the audience.
Flower Child (excerpt)—35:54 minutes, 2013
Flower Child is an essay film by Angela Counts that revisits her 1990s play of the same name, originally commissioned by New York Theatre Workshop, which interrogated the myth of the American Dream and the racial and generational legacies of the 1960s. By documenting rehearsals, interweaving archival footage, family photos, and interviews, Counts crafts a layered, deeply personal meditation on memory, history, and inherited trauma.
An Elegy for Susan—8:22 minutes, 2021
In 2016, the artist leaned that her mentor, art historian, Susan A. Denker passed away and bequeathed to her the contents of her cluttered and over-flowing Cambridge apartment. Those items included everything from the scholar’s medications and reading glasses to several rare, first-edition books by Countee Cullen, Jean Paul Sartre, and Sylvia Plath. In this haunting video, the artist wears Denker’s clothes and her face is obscured by a floral-printed textile found amongst Denker’s sewing materials. The artist uses slow hand gestures to silently convey and wrestle with the intangible but pervasive and complicated nature of the shock and grief that comes from losing a loved one.
Les Dueling Demoiselles (excerpt)—3:04 minutes, 2021
Les Dueling Demoiselles is in response to two important paintings that were part of Susan’s art history slides and teaching materials: Picasso’s Les Demoiselles D’Avignon, produced in 1907, and Robert Colescott’s response to Picasso’s painting, called Les Demoiselles d’Alabama: Vestidas, painted in 1985. Shot and improvised over two days, the piece is a playful Black feminist response to the patriarchal constraints of modern art.
Join the Lunder Institute for American Art and the Colby College Museum of Art in celebrating the collaborative work of two Lunder Fellows, writer and visual artist Dell M. Hamilton and playwright and filmmaker Angela Counts. Three of their works will be screened, after which Hamilton and Counts will lead a discussion with the audience.
Flower Child (excerpt)—35:54 minutes, 2013
Flower Child is an essay film by Angela Counts that revisits her 1990s play of the same name, originally commissioned by New York Theatre Workshop, which interrogated the myth of the American Dream and the racial and generational legacies of the 1960s. By documenting rehearsals, interweaving archival footage, family photos, and interviews, Counts crafts a layered, deeply personal meditation on memory, history, and inherited trauma.
An Elegy for Susan—8:22 minutes, 2021
In 2016, the artist leaned that her mentor, art historian, Susan A. Denker passed away and bequeathed to her the contents of her cluttered and over-flowing Cambridge apartment. Those items included everything from the scholar’s medications and reading glasses to several rare, first-edition books by Countee Cullen, Jean Paul Sartre, and Sylvia Plath. In this haunting video, the artist wears Denker’s clothes and her face is obscured by a floral-printed textile found amongst Denker’s sewing materials. The artist uses slow hand gestures to silently convey and wrestle with the intangible but pervasive and complicated nature of the shock and grief that comes from losing a loved one.
Les Dueling Demoiselles (excerpt)—3:04 minutes, 2021
Les Dueling Demoiselles is in response to two important paintings that were part of Susan’s art history slides and teaching materials: Picasso’s Les Demoiselles D’Avignon, produced in 1907, and Robert Colescott’s response to Picasso’s painting, called Les Demoiselles d’Alabama: Vestidas, painted in 1985. Shot and improvised over two days, the piece is a playful Black feminist response to the patriarchal constraints of modern art.