Screening and Lecture - Court Theatre

Join us for a film screening of Bushman (1971), in partnership with the University of Chicago Film Studies Center. This film selection is Inspired by Joseph Asagai, a character in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, a Nigerian student studying abroad in Chicago and a suitor to Beneatha Younger. Throughout the play, Joseph’s character provides a Pan-African perspective in response to Beneatha’s boundless ambitions and the struggles of the entire Younger family.

Parallel to themes within the play, the Bushman film begins in 1968, when Peace Corps veteran David Schickele enlists his friend Paul Eyam Nzie Okpokam to star in an independent film about the adventures of a young Nigerian intellectual teaching abroad in San Francisco. The film will be followed by a lecture on Pan-Africanism, then and now, by scholar and curator Antawan I. Byrd, PhD, who specializes in modern and contemporary art of Africa and the African diaspora. Byrd is an Associate Curator of Photography at the Art Institute of Chicago where his most recent exhibition, Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica is now on view (December 15, 2024 – March 30, 2025).

February 21, 2025 | The Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts (915 E 60th St, Chicago, IL 60637), Room 201 | 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Still photo from Bushman, courtesy of Kino Lorber. Bushman has been restored by the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. Additional support provided by Peter Conheim, Cinema Preservation Alliance. A Milestone Films & Video and Kino Lorber Release.

Presented in partnership with

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