CREATIVELY SPEAKING Comes to BAM Next Month

This May, BAM and Creatively Speaking present two contemporary documentary features: Pam Sporn's Detroit 48202: Conversations Along a Postal Route (2018) on Wednesday, May 29, and Savanna Washington's Playing Frisbee in North Korea (2018), screening with the short film Xin (Dauchan & Huang, 2017), screening on Thursday, May 30. Curated by Michelle Materre, Creatively Speaking is a curated film series highlighting films by and about women and people of color.

Detroit 48202 examines the rise, demise, and contested resurgence of Detroit through the lens of African-American mail carrier Wendell Watkins and the community he served for 30 years. Journeying with Watkins along his route, Spornprofiles a cross-section of resilient Detroiters who share stories of resistance-pushing back against racial segregation in housing, challenging industrial and political disinvestment-and discuss their hopes for an inclusive, equitable, and reinvigorated city. Watkins and Sporn will be in attendance, as well as Kim Moore, one of the neighbors on Watkins' route.

Playing Frisbee in North Korea is the first documentary produced and directed by an African-American woman from inside North Korea. Surreptitiously shot undercover, Washington's film provides a vérité, on-the-ground look at the lives and struggles of the people inside the world's most enigmatic country. It screens with Xin, a short narrative, produced and starring Tina Huang and directed by Desha Dauchan, about a woman haunted by the ghost of her mother. Director Washington will be in attendance, as well as Xin filmmakers Tina Huang and Desha Dauchan.

Creatively Speaking has been in existence for twenty-four years, produced and curated by Michelle Materre. She co-curated the widely celebrated 2017 BAM series One Way or Another: Black Women's Cinema, 1970-1991, which received a Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics and was called "the most important repertory series of the year" by New Yorker magazine.