Alfreda’s Cinema and Jupiter Magazine co-present Octavia Butler: Between Worlds

On the ancestral birthday of Octavia E. Butler, we gather in 2025—the year after her oft-cited Parable of the Sower begins—to reflect on her prophetic vision of a fractured world: one where Black life harnesses its endlessly adaptive potential and endures beyond (and before) the looming jaws of apocalypse. Orbiting broadly around space-travel and the evacuation of human life from earth’s atmosphere, these short films nod to Parable’s protagonist, Lauren Olamina, who devises a belief system called Earthseed, wherein she and her flock assert that “The Destiny of Earthseed / Is to take root among the stars.” Here, we echo Butler’s unflinching and yet redemptive lens, through which survival demands imagination, and hope is a discipline (word to Mariame Kaba), not a guarantee.

Join us after the program for a panel discussion with multidisciplinary artist and cultural worker OlaRonke Akinmowo and co-founder/editor-in-chief of Jupiter Magazine Camille Bacon.

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Program:

The Changing Same (2001)
Dir. Cauleen Smith
10min

Afronauts (2014)
Dir. Nutoma Badomo
14min

Julie Dash & Octavia Butler Interview Excerpt (1995)
20min

Cosmic Slop: “Space Traders” (1994)
Dir. Reginald Hudlin
33min

The Monophobic Response (2024)
American Artist
15min

Uhara (back and forth) (2009)
Dir. Simone Leigh
5min