Event Details
Filmed in Harlem, New York, and in Claude Monet’s gardens in Giverny, France, THE GIVERNY SUITE is a cinematic poem that advocates for the safety and bodily autonomy of Black women. Employing techniques such as hand-painted film animation and montage editing, Gary first developed the work during an artist residency in Giverny, where the gardens offered a space of respite. Centrally featured are person-on-the-street interviews in which the artist approaches women at the intersection of Lenox Avenue (also known as Malcolm X Boulevard) and West 116th Street and asks, “Do you feel safe?” A tour-de-force of collaboration, these interviews are interspersed with footage of singer Nina Simone, performer Josephine Baker, political activist Fred Hampton, and Diamond Reynolds recounting the killing of her boyfriend Philando Castile by police in 2016.
Presented by Museum of Modern Art, the film will be showing from September onward.