The Complete Works of Edward Owens
DIRECTOR: EDWARD OWENS
PRIVATE IMAGININGS AND NARRATIVE FACTS
1966 / 9 mins / Digital
REMEMBRANCE: A PORTRAIT STUDY
1967 / 6 mins / Digital
AUTRE FOIS J'AI UNE FEMME
1966 / 22 mins / Digital
TOMORROW'S PROMISE
1967 / 45 mins / Digital
At eighteen years old, queer Black artist Edward Owens began composing film portraits consisting of superimposed images. Using baroque lighting techniques, he delicately captures an evening of laughs between his mother Mildred Owens and her friend, Nettie Thomas, applying their relaxed state with pop music in Remembrance: a Portrait Study; peers into the vacantness of love in Tomorrow’s Promise; blurs fantasy and reality in Private Imaginings and Narrative Facts; and displays grim determination in his first film, Autre fois J'ai Aime Une Femme (Once I loved a Woman). A native of Chicago, Owens moved to New York in the late-sixties, following the advice of experimental filmmaker Gregory J. Markopoulos. His brief career was tragically cut short by personal issues that nearly cost him his life, and after returning to Chicago, his visionary work went largely overlooked. In collaboration with The Film-maker's Cooperative, Alfreda’s Cinema presents the shorts program: “like (Black) women did”: The Complete Works of Edward Owens.
Presented in collaboration with The Film-maker’s Cooperative. Programmed by Melissa Lyde.
