The Harlem Renaissance on Film

Join South Side Projections and Blanc Gallery for a screening of two films about the Harlem Renaissance and photographer James Van Derzee. Patric McCoy, the founder of Diasporal Rhythms, will introduce the film and lead discussion afterward.

Black Has Always Been Beautiful is a 1971 portrait of famed Harlem Renaissance photographer James Van Derzee. Van Derzee discusses his technique and his history, and we witness his process as he photographs a young black woman. William Greaves’s 1974 film From These Roots uses period photographs to explore the extraordinary artistic, cultural and political flowering that characterized the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

Patric McCoy is a retired environmental scientist and photographer who has been collecting contemporary African American art for 41 years and has a collection of over 1000 pieces of fine art, 90% done by Chicago artists. In 2003 he co-founded Diasporal Rhythms, a not-for-profit 501(c)3 arts organization that comprises informed and passionate art collectors from Chicago’s African American communities. The organization promotes the collection of artworks by living artists of African descent.