Brick by Brick with Haile Gerima’s Shorts

In addition to her work as a key creative player producing Haile Gerima’s films, Shirikiana Aina is a filmmaker in her own right. Her debut short documentary, Brick by Brick, unflinchingly chronicles the violence of gentrification in Black neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. Though made almost forty years ago, Brick by Brick connects the “systematic genocide,” as one subject says, of displacement in a global context—a reality that still rings true today. Brick by Brick will screen with Gerima’s short films made at UCLA: Hour Glass and Child of Resistance. Hour Glass is a richly symbolic study of a young basketball player (Mel Rosier), whose consciousness is altered by exposure to radical philosophers such as Frantz Fanon; Child of Resistance came to Gerima after he dreamed of seeing Angela Davis in handcuffs on television. 

Brick by Brick  
Director: Shirikiana  Aina. 1982. 37 minutes. USA. Color. English. 16mm. 

Hour Glass  
Director: Haile Gerima. Cast: Mel Rosier. 1971. 14 minutes. USA. B&W and Color. English. Digital.  Courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.  

Child of Resistance   
Director: Haile Gerima. Cast: Barbarao. 1972. 36 minutes. USA. B&W and Color. English. Digital. Courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

All film screenings of Imperfect Journey: Haile Gerima and His Comrades are available here.