Bring lawn chairs and/or blankets. Notify us of special needs. Bring printed hard copy tickets, not electronic. In case of rain, event will switch to the Cheek Theater indoors.
Inspired by the exhibition The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse
Fri, Jun 18, 2021 | 8:30–10:30 pm
Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012; dir Benh Zeitlin; 93 min)
Starring Quvenzhané Wallis, Dwight Henry, Levy Easterly
$8 (VMFA member, $5) Limited Seating
Hushpuppy, an intrepid six-year-old girl, lives with her father, Wink, in the Bathtub, a southern Delta community at the edge of the world. Wink’s tough love prepares her for the unraveling of the universe; for a time when he’s no longer there to protect her. When Wink contracts a mysterious illness, nature flies out of whack, temperatures rise, and the ice caps melt, unleashing an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs. With the waters rising, the aurochs coming, and Wink’s health fading, Hushpuppy goes in search of her lost mother.
Fri, Jul 23, 2021 | 8:30–10:30 pm
Hale County This Morning This Evening (2018; 76 min) with director RaMell Ross in-person.
Image credit: Cinema Guild
$8 (VMFA member, $5) Limited Seating
Hale County This Morning This Evening (2018; dir RaMell Ross; 76 min) Composed of intimate and unencumbered moments of people in a community, this film is constructed in a form that allows the viewer an emotive impression of the Historic South – trumpeting the beauty of life and consequences of the social construction of race, while simultaneously a testament to dreaming. (Written by IMDB)
Fri, Aug 13, 2021 | 8:30–10:30 pm
Daughters of the Dust (1991, 113 min)
The Afrikana Film Festival Presents Daughters of the Dust (1991) as the third and last movie in the VMFA Outdoor Film Series: Dirty South: A Cinematic Sense of Place and Community.
$8 (VMFA and Afrikana members, $5)
This acclaimed film is the contemplative story of family, tradition, and Black womanhood in 1902. Director Julie Dash’s seminal work follows a multigenerational African American family, as they prepare to leave their home of the Gullah Geechee Islands for the mainland. The Gullah culture of the sea islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia are where African folk-ways were maintained well into the 20th Century and was one of the last bastions of these mores in America. Co-presented by VMFA and Afrikana Independent Film Festival.