King Is Dead: Screening and Conversation

Watch a recording of the event here.

Kamoinge Workshop artist James M. Mannas Jr. screens his film “King is Dead” (1968), an account of the reactions of his New York community to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The screening is followed by a conversation with the filmmaker RaMell Ross, moderated by Whitney assistant curator Carrie Springer.

RaMell Ross is a visual artist, filmmaker, and writer based in Rhode Island and Alabama. His feature documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening won a Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar at the 91st Academy Awards.

Presented in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art, this series of programs features conversations with artists from the Kamoinge Workshop included in the exhibition Working Together: Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop currently on view at the Whitney. The talks explore the group’s genesis in Harlem in the 1960s, its role in the Black Arts movement, and the multidisciplinary interests and practices of its members, bringing together artists from the Kamoinge Workshop with scholars and critics of Black arts and culture.

Image caption: James Mannas Jr., No Way Out, Harlem, NYC, 1964. Gelatin silver print: sheet, 15 1/16 × 11 in. (38.26 × 27.94 cm), image, 8 5/16 × 6 3/8 in. (21.11 × 16.19 cm). Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment. ©️ Jimmie Mannas