Lord Shango Unclassified 18+ 92 mins
Christianity clashes with African spiritualism when a mother summons a tribal priest to avenge her daughter in this singular, supernatural oddity of 70s Black cinema.
Amid the quiet menace of rural Tennessee, teenage Billie is about to be baptised when her boyfriend Femi, an avid follower of an African religious cult, tries to intervene, and members of the Christian parish brutally drown him in a river. Racked with grief and madness, Billie disappears. Her mother Jenny (the late, great Marlene Clark, Ganja & Hess) then summons a tribal priest in a desperate bid to find her, and is drawn into a mysterious world of sorcery and esoteric belief.
Shapeshifting between horror, social drama and the occult, Ray Marsh’s haunting 1975 film, drawn from a potent script by acclaimed Black playwright Paul Carter Harrison, was released at the height of Blaxploitation cinema but defied clear-cut genre labels. Powered by the syncopated drumming of free-jazz pioneer Milford Graves and a hypnotically sinister score, Lord Shango casts an unshakeable spell, toying with the conventions of exploitation and horror cinema to explode the simmering tension between spirituality and religion.
“Rife with powerful allegory … A film of style and deep substance that ranks among the best independent works of 1970s Black cinema.” – Screen Slate
——— Please note: This screening will be introduced by film critic Kelli Weston (New York Times, MUBI), and a panel discussion will follow the film.
Tickets
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