Celebrate the opening of URI’s new Language Center with a screening of the film, Milli’s Awakening and Q&A with Black German director, scholar, and activist Dr. Natasha A. Kelly (Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor of German).

Dr. Kelly’s film brings together the voices of eight Black womxn artists of various generations reporting on their challenges in and with German art institutions, with visual representation, and political and social exclusion. In 1911, the German expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner painted Sleeping Milli, sourcing his erotic inspiration as depicting Milli naked on a couch. Dr. Kelly’s documentary examines how Black womxn have been exoticized and eroticized by the white male gaze for centuries, immerses itself in the thoughts and emotions of Kirchner’s muse, the woman asleep in the painting, and lets Milli awake figuratively.

Film in German with English subtitles; Discussion/Q&A in English.

Registration required; Register for the event here.