Mothering on Screen: Down in the Delta (Maya Angelou, 1998)

This July and August, join The Logan Center for Mothering on Screen, a free film and discussion series. Featuring six films that explore the experiences of black mothers across different decades, landscapes and social contexts, this series will follow the labor of mothering through the popular, critical and experimental terms of black cinema.

Mothering on Screen begins with Down in the Delta. Directed by Maya Angelou in her first and only credit behind the camera, Down in the Delta explores the relationship between mothering and the ancestral memory of Black migration. Loretta is a single mother struggling to care for her two young children along the busy streets of Chicago. To protect her daughter from poverty and addiction, Loretta’s mother sends the family south to the Mississippi Delta for a summer with their Uncle Earl. This return to the South promises to revive the roots of a fragmented family tree, a restorative journey made possible by the multigenerational force of mothering.

This screening will feature a selection of home movies taken from the Lynette Frazier Collection, archived by the South Side Home Movie Project. Throughout the 50s and 60s, Frazier recorded silent, 8mm home movies that captured her Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood and her many travels across the country and abroad. Intended as a way to share her experiences with her family, Frazier’s collection mirrors Angelou’s Down in the Delta by using film as a tool for the preservation of family memory across time and space. Frazier will join us as a special guest.

A group discussion will follow each screening. Free and open to all!

 

To read more about the films and RSVP, click here.