Demons of the past haunt a great artist in the film debut of a prominent American contemporary artist. Russian premiere as part of the contemporary programme of the Festival of Singular Films.
Exhibiting Forgiveness
- Date:
- 22 Sep 2024,
16:00–18:00
- Age restrictions
- 18+
2024, Titus Kaphar
United States
117 minutes, English with Russian subtitles
Starring: André Holland, Andra Day, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, John Earl Jelks
T
Tarrell’s life looks perfect: he is a successful artist with a new exhibition waiting for him in New York, he adores his wife, and they are raising a clever son. But why does he have nightmares, and why do his paintings so often feature the image of an erased, cut-out, crossed-out black boy—the sort of boy that he once was himself? The answers to these questions start to become clear when Tarrell’s addiction-stricken homeless father comes into his life for the first time in decades.
Shot from Exhibiting Forgiveness, 2024
It’s a powerful film about the marks we make on each other that can never be erased and what we choose to do with the space on the canvas that remains.
— Ross McIndoe, Slant Magazine
In his first, partly autobiographical film, Titus Kaphar avoids the clichés of movies about the return of various prodigal relatives. The hero’s father is responsible not only for his son’s childhood traumas, but also for the qualities that largely shaped him as an artist. Andre Holland, star of The Knick and Moonlight, conveys this tangle of contradictions with an expressiveness never before achieved in his career.
Exhibiting Forgiveness is a logical progression in the career of Titus Kaphar who is a contemporary artist himself with works held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum and MoMA, and the recipient of the MacArthur “Genius Grant.” Important themes in Kaphar’s paintings, sculptures, and installations are the return of images of black people to cultural history and, conversely, the record of their violent and institutional disappearance from reality. His debut film, with an expectedly strong artistic element, weaves together both of these lines.
The screening will begin with a brief speech by the curator in Russian. If you require interpretation into English, please request it at least three days in advance by emailing international@ges-2.org.
The film was featured in the competition at the Sundance festival (2024).
