Anthology Film Archives

Film Screenings / Programs / Series

FOR JOHANNE, FOR JOJOLO: BLACK WOMEN, CINEMA, AND SELF-INVENTION

December 10 – December 11

December 10 & 11, 2026

A central objective of independent black film has been the search for self-definition, opposing norms of misrepresentation, erasure, and objectification to create an oppositional audiovisual language. Because the tyranny of the dominant cinematic gaze is both racialized and gendered, that effort has been particularly significant to Black women. For Johanne Harrelle (1930-94) – who held the ambivalent title of Canada’s first widely known Black fashion model in the 1950s and 1960s – there was no evident correspondence between being visible and being valued. Yet the daring and infinitely chic Harrelle claimed the fullness of her life on her own terms. At one time married to sociologist Edgar Morin and good friends with filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin, Harrelle was the memorable co-star of À TOUT PRENDRE (1963), before achieving a more spacious and self-possessed cinematic expression in JOJOLO (1966).

Harrelle is not only the face but the voice of the documentary, narrating herself through the streets of Paris. JOJOLO was directed by Lebert “Sandy” Bethune, a Jamaican-American filmmaker, writer, and poet formed by the currents of Back Liberation, Pan-Africanism, and Marxism in the orbit of C.L.R. James, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin. Like MALCOLM X: STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM (1967) – a crucial documentation of the leader’s turn to a Third-Worldist vision of global liberation – JOJOLO was made in collaboration with photographer John Taylor. Bookending the film – which takes its title from her nickname – Harrelle speaks about the masking and unmasking of her profession and exterior life as she applies and then removes her makeup – her adamant self-invention and interiority are what take center stage.

“For Johanne, For Jojolo: Black Women, Cinema, and Self-Invention” is a two-evening series pairing the newly-restored JOJOLO with two other films featuring Harrelle and works by Black women filmmakers. Together, they sketch out a chronology that starts from the political movement of Third Cinema in the 1960s, which inspired the trailblazing L.A. Rebellion, whose women filmmakers are central to the creation and continuation of Black feminist image-making.

Guest-programmed by Yasmina Price, who wrote the introduction and the short film program descriptions.

Special thanks to Lebert Bethune; Simone Bethune; Ina Archer & Bleakley McDowell (Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture); Amy Aquilino & Elenie Chung (Women Make Movies); Annouchka De Andrade; Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich; Alile Sharon Larkin; Sylvain Lavigne (Les Films du 3 Mars); Simone Leigh; and Edda Manriquez (Academy Film Archive).

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