Drive-In at On the Boards 

Un hombre que camina (A man who walks) features the world’s largest salt flat near Uyuni, Bolivia, instilling a monumental sense of timelessness. Invested in the loss of regional identity, Enrique Ramírez attempts to reconcile the historical and cultural gaps between Indigenous traditions and homogeneity driven by capitalism. Crafted by Indigenous coal miners to deter the Spanish military, the mask the modern-day shaman wears acts as a relic of colonial resistance and signifies the need to preserve intergenerational, intercultural rituals.

Korakrit Arunanondchai and Alex Gvojic examine the relationships between humans and non-human beings, connecting ritual, fiction, and reality. In the fifth iteration of No history in a room filled with people with funny names, a fictional Thai painter communicates with a drone spirit named Chantri about the consequences of globalization in contemporary Thailand.

Set in an abandoned swimming pool in Accra, Ghana, Akosua Adoma Owusu's Drexciya draws on the myth from the Detroit-based electronic band to create an afrofuturist portrait of an underwater subcontinent populated by the unborn children of African women thrown overboard during the Transatlantic slave trade. The Riviera was once known as Ghana's first pleasure beach. A one-time extravagant Ambassador Hotel of post- colonial - early Kwame Nkrumah era, the Riviera Beach Club thrived until the mid-1970's. The Olympic-sized pool, now in a dilapidated state, is used for locals for things other than swimming.

The End of Eating Everything interrogates the destructive nature of overconsumption. The singer Santigold plays a post-apocalyptic creature composed of human limbs and machine parts, possessing a voracious appetite and flying in the darkened sky.

Current social and political conditions permeate Satterwhite’s virtual quasi-utopic universe, created for the Black femme and as tribute to Breonna Taylor. The performative gestures of Satterwhite’s gender-ambiguous fembots serve as tools of resistance, effecting this space of Afrofuturist self-expression. The techno music is based on four songs by the artist’s mother; one of the songs inspired the work’s title, suggesting how inflicting pain on others deepens our collective wounds.

Total run time: 85 min

The film depicts an excavator demolishing the GlaxoSmithKline prescription drug plant in Cidra, Puerto Rico, which closed in 2009 after a former employee exposed severe contamination problems. The excavator possesses a cast-iron bell that transforms into a “sonic digger,” producing a cacophony when smashed into the building. The sound evokes the exploitation enacted by the U.S. and multinational corporations on the people and land of Puerto Rico.

In her film, Jumana Manna draws inspiration from Dr. Robert Lachmann, a Jewish-German ethnomusicologist who emigrated to Palestine in 1935. Lachmann founded a radio program for the Palestine Broadcasting Service entitled “Oriental Music” in which he would invite community members to perform their vernacular music. Following in Lachmann’s footsteps, Manna encounters Kurdish, Moroccan and Yeminite Jews, Samaritans, Beduoins, and Coptic Christians, and engages them in conversation around their music and life in Palestine.

Total run time: 87 min

Set in an abandoned swimming pool in Accra, Ghana, Akosua Adoma Owusu's Drexciya draws on the myth from the Detroit-based electronic band to create an afrofuturist portrait of an underwater subcontinent populated by the unborn children of African women thrown overboard during the Transatlantic slave trade. The Riviera was once known as Ghana's first pleasure beach. A one-time extravagant Ambassador Hotel of post- colonial - early Kwame Nkrumah era, the Riviera Beach Club thrived until the mid-1970's. The Olympic-sized pool, now in a dilapidated state, is used for locals for things other than swimming.

A Migration Tale blurs temporal boundaries to tell the story of cyclical racism through its references to the Great Migration, Afrofuturism, and notions of landscape. Adorned with a black cloak and silver mask, Rodney McMillian’s protagonist—a superhero or time traveler—wanders from a veranda in South Carolina to the streets of Harlem.

Incense, Sweaters and Ice is an adaptation of Martine Syms’s performance Misdirected Kiss (2016), which examines Black femininity. Syms shot the work in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Clarksdale, alluding to the routes of the Great Migration. The film explores how the subjects—Girl, Mrs. Queen Esther Bernetta White, and WB (“whiteboy")—move between watching, being watched, and remaining unseen. The camera performs different central roles, raising questions about the neutrality of its gaze and the influence of surveillance on perception and identity.

Total run time: 91 min