RUDE: A screening event and panel discussion

Please join us for an online screening of Clement Virgo's RUDE (1995), the first Canadian feature film written, produced, and directed by an all-Black team. The Canadian Film Centre describes this landmark film as "a surreal, vivid triptych of three characters struggling for redemption on an Easter weekend in a stylized inner-city... This triad of tales is riveted together by the provocative tirades of Rude, a sultry young woman, whose smoky voice and mystical persona power the local pirate radio channel." The film explores themes of Black urban life, queerness, diasporic identities, policing, love, and loss, animated by a captivating soundtrack that ranges from reggae to gospel music.

After the film, we welcome you to a panel discussion and Q&A with filmmaker Clement Virgo, and discussants Professor Beverly Bain and Dr. Lauren Cramer.

This event is hosted by Black and African Studies at the University of Toronto, Mississauga, and co-sponsored by the Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto. Contact julie.macarthur@utoronto.ca with any inquiries.

Clement Virgo is one of Canada’s foremost film directors. His TV directing credits include Empire (Fox), The Wire (HBO), The L Word (HBO), American Crime (ABC), and the OWN network drama series Greenleaf (2017), on which he also served as Executive Producer with Oprah Winfrey. Virgo is currently in post-production on his feature film BROTHER, based on the award-winning novel by David Chariandy, and is also in development with CBC on the limited series HALF-BLOOD BLUES, based on Esi Edugyan’s prized novel.

In 2015, Virgo directed and co-wrote a six-part miniseries adaptation of Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes which debuted to record-breaking numbers on the CBC in Canada and on BET in the U.S. and was nominated for two U.S. Critics Choice Television Awards, including Best Limited Series and four 2015 NAACP Image Award Nominations including Best Miniseries and Best Writing (Virgo, Hill).

His first feature film, RUDE, premiered at Cannes in 1995 and played festivals around the world including London and Sundance. Other feature films include POOR BOY’S GAME, and LIE WITH ME, which played top tier festivals including Berlinale and TIFF and sold in over 40 countries. Virgo currently sits on the Canadian Film Centre’s Board of Directors.

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Discussants:

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Professor Beverly Bain is a Black queer radical feminist, anti-capitalist scholar and activist. She teaches on Feminism, Blackness, queer diaspora, radical pedagogies, anti-violence, anti-racism and decolonialism in Women and Gender Studies, in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto/ Mississauga Campus. Bain frequently delivers lectures on Gender, anti-Blackness, Sexuality, abolition, and liberation nationally and international. She is interviewed regularly in the media on Black Feminism, queer organizing, and on policing and abolition. Bain is published in numerous books and journals including Queerly Canadian 2nd edition, We Still Demand: Redefining Resistance in Sex and Gender Struggles, Canadian Women’s Studies, Fireweed, and the Conversation.

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Dr. Lauren McLeod Cramer is an Assistant Professor in the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. Her work focuses on the aesthetics of blackness and popular culture. She is currently writing a book on hip-hop, architecture, and black spatial practice. Lauren is a founding member of liquid blackness, a research project on blackness and aesthetics, and is the co-Editor of liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies. Her writing has appeared in The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, The Black Scholar, Black Camera, Film Criticism, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Quarterly Review of Film and Video and the edited collection Writing for Screen Media (Routledge, 2019).