The African Film Festival features shorts films and featured films produced by African filmmakers from Africa and African Diaspora. The festival will include traditional African music and dance performances.
PVD World Music African Film Festival is a celebration of the rich culture and creative heritage of people of African descent that call Rhode Island home. Additionally, the festival will be screened on a forty-foot wide projector screen and audio transmitter system, which will enable the audience to screen the films safe from Covid-19 in the confines of their vehicles.
This event is part of the mission of the PVD World Music to celebrate, promote and preserve traditional music and art of peoples of African Descendent here in Providence, RI.
September 17 Location: WaterFire Arts Center (475 Valley Street)
September 18 Location: Southside Cultural Center of RI (393 Broad Street)
Motif Magazine is presenting a monthly screening series showcasing the latest and greatest underdogs in local films. The September edition will be at the WaterFire Arts Center, in collaboration with PVDFest.
The event will feature the music of amazing Venezuelan artist, Julio Amaro Guitar, drinks and food provided by Troop and amazing short films from Venezuela and USA:
Everyone calls me Ori (Venezuela 5min) directed by Vadim Lasca Orsini
The Torte (USA 2min) directed by Tyna Harber Caldarone
Femme (USA / Venezuela 8min) directed by Carla Forte S
The time is Already (USA 33 min) directed by Selene Means
Tisure (Venezuela, 13min) directed by Adrian Geyer
The smell of Oranges (Venezuela 9min) directed by Charles Martínez
If you knew (USA 8min) Produced by Al Gomes, Connie Watrous and Tim Labonte Narrated by James Michael Tyler (AKA Gunther from FRIENDS (TV Show)
Per usual, they will have ballots to vote for the Audience Award so come on over, have some drinks, enjoy great food, amazing music and incredible short films. For more information, please visit https://fb.me/e/6OnmVlQdt
Please join us for this special PVDFest Happening and get your shirt printed with the “Where Long Pond Used To Be” design for free and stay to enjoy the ribbon cutting ceremony!
The Elmwood and West End neighborhoods of Providence used to have a big beautiful pond that was completely filled in by the early 20th century. Walker Mettling designed the “Where Long Pond Used To Be” mural project at the West End Rec Center as an an ACT Public Art Ideas Competition commissioned artist.
The Murals are visible and visitable from the Bucklin Park entrance at the corner of Daboll and Dexter Streets (inside the historical footprint of Long Pond).
There are three exciting performers for today’s PVDFest Happening!
Funkademic
Performers: Josh Kennedy, Gustav Hoffmann, Jason Protass, Elias Muhanna
Funkademic is a quartet based in Providence, Rhode Island playing funk and soul music from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, on period-correct instruments. Funkademic includes Josh Kennedy (guitar), Gustav Hoffmann (bass), Jason Protass (drums), Elias Muhanna (keys).
La Salsa & Quesqueya 4Ever
Performers: La Salsa: MC, Shure Live: DJ, Dvalor: Audio
This is a celebration of American Aboriginal Culture through music and dance.
Chubby Pockets
Chubby Pockets is a six-piece instrumental ensemble led by bassist and Philadelphia-area native Kweku Kwegyir-Aggrey. The group is heavily jazz influenced, but also draws inspiration from funk, R&B, soul, and groove genres. The band features Maya Polsky on the guitar, Jake D’Ambra on the saxophone, Danny Silverston on the piano, Dan Mach-Holt on the trombone, and Maxx Meether on the drums.
From the creators: The Historical Fantasy of Esek Hopkins is an activist dance opera, that reimagines the narrative of Esek Hopkins; the future of our community; the future of public space; the future we will leave behind to our children’s children. As we cleanse, heal, and practice liberation with our community, this project is a protest-demonstration against the system that tells us that Esek Hopkins’ former home is worth preserving. We are choreographing for justice.
The cast for this community workshop performance features The Haus of Glitter Dance Company + Performance Lab, April Brown, Becky Bass, Shey ‘Rí Acu’ Rivera Ríos, Anjel Newman (Medusah Black), Satta Jallah, Sidy Maiga & over 35+ local contributing artists. Produced by The Haus of Glitter Dance Company + Performance Lab, The Wilbury Theatre Group, PRONK! Fest, and PVDFest, with support from the Partnership for Providence Parks, & The RI Foundation, the production runs September 9-17, outdoors, at the former home of Esek Hopkins.
Audience members may register for performances at www.thewilburygroup.org. For more information on The Haus of Glitter’s historic intervention and a full list of project partners, visit www.hausofglitter.org.
This production is the culmination of the City of Providence’s two-year PARKIST Artist Residency. Since Jan 1, 2020, The Haus of Glitter has been living in the former home of Esek Hopkins (1718-1802), widely known as the first commander-in-chief of the Continental Navy during the American Revolutionary War. For more information on this residency, please visit https://artculturetourism.com/parkist-in-residence-blog/
Performers: Josh Kennedy, Gustav Hoffmann, Jason Protass, Elias Muhanna
Funkademic is a quartet based in Providence, Rhode Island playing funk and soul music from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, on period-correct instruments. Funkademic includes Josh Kennedy (guitar), Gustav Hoffmann (bass), Jason Protass (drums), Elias Muhanna (keys).
The City of Providence’s Department of Art, Culture + Tourism and Office of Sustainability invite you to join Artist-in-Residence Fatema Maswood as they reflect on seeds as a technology for abundance and connectivity. Fatema will share some of her work with Providence Seed Library, talk about building an art practice in relationship with the plant world, and guide the group in making seed sculptures and mobile medicine gardens. This event is part of SustainPVD Fair 2021.
Providence Seed Library (provseedlib.com) is a living collection of open-pollinated, heirloom, and culturally resonant seeds available for free to the public through Providence Community Libraries branches. The seeds are fully searchable in the library’s online catalogue (search “providence seed library” as your key term). Alongside the seed library, users can access educational programming and visit gardens at individual library branches. The seed collection was built through Fatema’s artist residency with the Office of Sustainability, where they were awarded to develop artwork to engage Providence residents in the strategies outlined in the Providence Climate Justice Plan.
Fatema Maswood (they/them, she/her) is an ecological designer and educator of Tunisian and Bangladeshi descent. Their work addresses decentralized water infrastructure, disaster resilience, soil remediation, and land justice. Their projects include explorations of traditional North African water harvesting technologies, designing future cities with youth, interactive disaster preparedness games, and graphic introductions to zoning documents and cooperative land ownership. Informed by being raised in a Sufi tradition, Fatema works to embody spiritual practices of recollection, remembrance, and revolution within their artistic practice.
Artist Talk + Mobile Medicine Garden Workshop
Thursday, September 9, 5:30PM
Providence Community Library Washington Park branch library
1316 Broad St, Providence, RI
Pull up ‘n laugh at this special PVDFest Happening: Comedy Night in the Park! This event is hosted by Wole Akinbi and will feature performers including June Brone, John Matthews, Derrick Fonseca and Jaybee.
Join local printmakers Jacques Bidon (Counterform), Lois Harada (DWRI Letterpress), and Ally Thatcher (Fallen Cargo) for a hands on printing demonstration. The artists will also present their work in a Zoom panel in conversation about their approach to text-based posters and printing as a form of activism.
Participants will see physical samples of each artist’s work at the demonstration as well as print their own preset poster designed by the artists. No printing experience is necessary.
This project is a partnership between Counterform Press, DWRI Letterpress, Fallen Cargo, and the Department of Art, Culture + Tourism in collaboration with Design Week 2021.
Print To Disarm
Zoom Panel
Monday, September 20, 2021
5:30PM – 6:30PM
Print To Disarm
Hands-on Workshops
DWRI Letterpress
40 Rice St.
Providence, RI
Saturday, September 25, 2021
3:00PM – 4:00PM and 4:30PM – 5:30PM
ALLY THATCHER
Ally Thatcher is a multidisciplinary designer based in New England. She runs an art and design practice called Fallen Cargo that is centered around protecting and preserving Black American culture. Her work ranges from graphic design, illustration, political satire, film photography, and printmaking.
@fallencargo
JACQUES BIDON
Jacques Bidon is a commercial printer who left the world of cutthroat deadlines to work with artists and designers
alike. Sharing his love of offset and letterpress printing is a blessing. He believes in the power of printing to change just about anything. With over three decades of commercial printing experience, Jacques runs Bidon Press, a commercial shop offering printing solutions for artists and designers as well as one-on-one printing instruction. He also prints his own art using traditional and non traditional print mediums like letterpress, etching and offset in combination.
@jacquesoffset
LOIS HARADA
Lois Harada is a printmaker bridging fine art and commercial printing in Providence, Rhode Island. Her work utilizes commercial production techniques and equipment to create printed editions that are meant to be affordable and accessible to a wide audience. Print editions are often responses to mass produced print material created by governments, corporations or newspapers. She frequently utilizes text and the medium of the poster.
Originally from Salt Lake City, Lois settled in Providence after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Fine Arts, Printmaking (2010). She is the Lead Designer and Social Stationery Manager at DWRI Letterpress where she also prints her own work.
