Lord Shango (Critical Condition)
Key Cast: Lawrence Cook, Marlene Clark, Wally Taylor
Director: Ray Marsh
Producer: Ronald Hobbs, Steve Bono
Screenwriter: Paul Carter Harrison
Cinematographer: Edward R. Brown
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
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This screening will be introduced by film critic Kelli Weston (New York Times, MUBI), and a panel discussion will follow the film.
Dr Kelli Weston is a film critic and programmer based in Brooklyn. She earned her doctorate at Birkbeck College, University of London, and specialises in nonfiction and horror cinema, with a particular emphasis on the visual narratives of Black women filmmakers. Her writing has been published in Sight and Sound, Film Comment, The Current (Criterion) and The Guardian, among other publications.
Santilla Chingaipe is a filmmaker, historian and author, whose work explores settler colonialism, slavery and postcolonial migration in Australia. Her first book of nonfiction, detailing the untold stories of African convicts, is forthcoming, and the critically acclaimed and award-winning documentary inspired by the book Our African Roots is streaming on SBS On Demand. The recipient of several awards, she was recognised at the United Nations as one of the most influential people of African descent in the world in 2019. She is a regular contributor to The Saturday Paper, and served as a member of the federal government’s Advisory Group on Australia–Africa Relations.
Kai Perrignon is a Melbourne-based writer and filmmaker with an expertise in cult and horror genres. His writing has appeared in The Big Issue and Metrograph Journal, and his horror film Between the Ocean and the Clouds will be released soon. He is an alum of MIFF Critics Campus 2017, and he teaches film at VCA. His Letterboxd is his name, if not his soul.