In celebration of Black History Month, Marcus Addison, Gurnee, Chicago Heights, Country Club Hills and Orland Park cinemas in the Chicagoland area will celebrate Black Stories with a jubilant movie series of recent releases and classic movie favorites that inspire, entertain, and celebrate the role of Black and brown people in film.
Films will run February 23-29, cost is $5 per person and includes a free junior popcorn with admission. Tickets and showtimes can be found at MarcusTheatres.com.
This is a great list of films, to either watch for the first time or to relive—all for a nice outing with free popcorn.
The Color Purple (PG-13) – A woman faces many hardships in her life, but ultimately finds extraordinary strength and hope in the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood in the 2023 American coming-of-age musical period drama.
Origin (PG-13) – The unspoken system that has shaped America and chronicles how lives today are defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.
Girls Trip (R) – When four lifelong friends travel to New Orleans for the annual Essence Festival, sisterhoods are rekindled, wild sides are rediscovered, and there’s enough dancing, drinking, brawling, and romancing to make the Big Easy blush.
Tyler Perry’s A Madea Family Funeral (PG-13) – A joyous family reunion becomes a hilarious nightmare as Madea and the crew travel to backwoods Georgia, where they find themselves unexpectedly planning a funeral that might unveil unsavory family secrets.
American Masters Shorts presents ‘Searching for Augusta Savage’
The Audacious Women Productions documentary spotlights the story of Augusta Savage, a major contributor to the Harlem Renaissance, and why half of the sculptures she created have been lost or destroyed.
Screen Actors Guild, Critics Choice, and NAACP Image Award-winner Lorraine Toussaint is featured as the voice of Augusta Savage.
“Searching for Augusta Savage,” a 22-minute film that tells the story of an inspiring and enterprising artist, who in the 1920s and 30s created a pipeline of creative opportunities for Black artists, will air on American Masters Shorts, a new digital series from PBS’ flagship biography series, American Masters.
Narrated by art historian and curator Jeffreen M. Hayes, Ph.D. (traveling exhibit and book, Augusta Savage: Renaissance Woman), with Lorraine Toussaint (“The Equalizer”) providing dramatic readings of the words of Augusta Savage
Sculptor Augusta Savage opened the first gallery in the U.S. dedicated to exhibiting the work of Black artists in 1939. She also founded several organizations that provided free art education and training to 2,500 people, and mentored many celebrated artists, including Romare Bearden, Gwendolyn Knight, Jacob Lawrence, Selma Burke, Norman Lewis, and Kenneth B. Clark.
Savage was the first African American elected to the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, later renamed the National Association of Women Artists, and was the only Black artist, and one of four women, commissioned to create an exhibit for the 1939 World’s Fair in Flushing, New York. While Savage was both active and prolific, only half of the approximately 160 pieces of sculpture she created have survived today, and little is known about her extensive accomplishments.
The short film investigates why evidence of Savage’s life and legacy appears to have been erased. Dr. Denise Murrell, Merryl H. and James S. Tisch Curator at Large, and Associate Curator of 19th- and 20th-Century Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, provides analysis in the film about why Savage’s work is missing from most museum collections, stating that, “[In] the museum market, the art market, the galleries, the critical attention was given to male artists.” Murrell is curator of the Met’s exhibition, “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism,” which opens February 25, and includes two of Savage’s works of art.
“Searching for Augusta Savage” is written, produced and directed by Charlotte Mangin and Sandra Rattley.
Mangin says, “‘Searching for Augusta Savage’ continues our dedication to bringing untold stories to life. Savage’s life has contemporary relevance, as a 2019 analysis by Williams College of more than 40,000 works of art in the permanent collections of 18 major museums revealed that 85 percent of the artists exhibited in the most visited U.S. museums are white, and 87 percent are male. Just 0.5 percent of acquisitions were of the work of Black women.”
Rattley adds that, “Audacious Women Productions is proud to revive Augusta Savage’s work and legacy as one of her best known works, ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ was bulldozed when the fair ended, and only exists today in souvenir miniatures and archival photographs. Our digital reconstruction of this missing monument helps to expand the archive and reverse Savage’s historical erasure.”
“Searching for Augusta Savage” is a production of Audacious Women Productions, LLC, in association with American Masters Pictures and Black Public Media, with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Search for it on American Masters YouTube channel, PBS and the PBS App.
