Q&A with Mike Henderson following the screening

A singular cinematic figure, San Francisco’s Mike Henderson became one of the first independent African-American artists to make inroads into experimental filmmaking in the 1960s. Henderson’s work throughout the 1970s and 1980s, from which this program of 16mm films is culled, thrums with a sociopolitical, humorous sensibility that lends his small-scale, often musically kissed portraits (which he later dubbed “blues cinema”) a personal, artisanal quality.

All films preserved by the Academy Film Archive.

MONEY, 1970, 2m

Dufus (aka Art), 1970/73, 6m

The Shape of Things, 1981, 8m

The Last Supper, 1970/73, 8m

When & Where, 1984, 3m

Down Hear, 1972, 12m

Mother’s Day, 1970, 14m

Pitchfork and the Devil, 1979, 16m