Welcome

Welcome to Black Female Filmmakers of the L.A. Rebellion: an interactive exhibit that explores Black female cinematic auteurship during the revolutionary L.A. Rebellion at UCLA. 

The L.A. Rebellion is a film movement that spanned across the 1960s to the 1980s in which Black film students at UCLA began formulating a Black filmic aesthetic that opposed the conventions of classical Hollywood cinema. The movement is marked by its highly radical nature, drawing from Third Cinema in its overt politicization whilst also experimenting with forms of expressing Black life. This exhibit focuses on the key Black female filmmakers involved in the L.A. Rebellion including Julie Dash, Jacqueline Frazier, Melvonna Bellenger, Alile Sharon Larkin, and Barbara McCullough—particularly interpreting and analyzing one short film from their respective bodies of work and situating them as entries into a versatile, radical tradition of Black filmic archival practice. 

This exhibit explores how archives shape the way women's labor becomes visible, celebrated, overlooked, or erased. Rather than treating archives as neutral containers, it exposes how descriptive choices such as captions, tables, slogans, and metadata guide what counts as meaningful labor and what does not. Drawing on scholarly conversations about memory, archival power, and the limits of representation, this exhibit shows how institutions cultivate certain narratives while obfuscating others. By placing various forms of labor in conversation through their modes of description, the exhibit invites viewers to think about how women's work enters the historical record and why those choices continue to influence what today's labor will mean in the future.

For my exhibit, I wanted to take you on a journey through the history of Little Nourse Theater, the student-led theater of Carleton College. The Little Nourse Theater was built as an extension to Nourse Dormitory in 1932 and has a reputation for structural issues as well as a deep sentimentality to students throughout the decades. This exhibit will not only span the entirety of the theater's lifespan but also specifically highlight moments of student resilience and perseverance in the face of hardships while working in theater. In viewing this exhibit, I would go in chronological order, starting with the Carletonian Article from 1932 and ending with the Antigone comparison.

Student-led theater is an area I am quite passionate about. I only recently became an active member of Carleton's Experimental Theater, or ETB, but the time I have spent there has been awe-inspiring and eye-opening, as I have witnessed the sheer determination and perseverance it takes to run a student-led theater board. There are limitations in budget, set, and actors, and still, revolutionary works are created in as small and restricted a space as Little Nourse Theater.

Although student-led theater is deemed as less professional, the drive and passion is unlike anything I have seen in professional Carleton shows. When something is entirely student-run, there is a pride and ownership from the students that is not always apparent in shows produced by the College. Theater is a beautiful paradox of an entirely fanciful world rooted in sincerity. It allows outlets for communities that have traditionally been ostracized to find a place of refuge and solace. Under the guise of art, protests and acts of transgression are made possible.

After spending countless hours in Little Nourse this term, I share a similar sentiment to the theater as my predecessors. This history and love for the theater are rich and cover every wall, literally and figuratively. Through this exhibit, I hope you also develop a fondness for this little theater and appreciate the perseverance of theater students past and present.