Film Series
A String of Pearls: The Films of Camille Billops & James Hatch
“Some people say our films have a tendency toward dirty laundry. The films say it like it is, rather than how people want it to be.”—Camille Billops
One of the great path-breaking documentarians in American cinema history, Camille Billops, is celebrated in this series featuring new restorations of her complete body of film work. Long difficult to access, these six films—made in collaboration with her creative and life partner James Hatch—are playful, searching, and daring in turns. From her masterpieces Finding Christa and Suzanne, Suzanne to rarely screened explorations of women’s sexuality, cultural theft, Black masculinity, and more, Billops shares a vision of the Black American experience that’s formally inventive and fearlessly personal.
Camille Billops creates piercing explorations of her own family’s history in her most celebrated works, about mothers and daughters struggling to both move on and reconnect.
Two of Billops’ most thrillingly free-form works offer a satirical journey through American racism that riffs on Dante’s Inferno and an exploration of the stolen cultural heritage of African-Americans.
Inspired by her aunt’s dalliance with a man half her age and the stories of men in her family, Billops uses personal history to unlock intimate explorations of women’s sexuality, romance, and masculinity.