Presented by Cinema Project and Mississippi Records
with Mark Toscano from the Academy Film Archive
Mike Henderson, acclaimed painter and legend of the Bay Area blues scene, is far too little known for his remarkable body of 16mm film work, which includes more than two dozen films from the 1960s to the 1980s. They are radically inventive, often hilariously funny, and very rarely shown. Reflecting an unusual synthesis of his music and painting backgrounds, the films span audiovisual compositional experiments, absurdist musings on creativity, and blues-driven performative pieces about Black identity, all rendered in a powerful and unadorned DIY directness. This program, curated and presented by archivist Mark Toscano, will include several restored prints from the Academy Film Archive. Cinema Project is excited to co-present this program with our friends, Mississippi Records. All films will be presented as 16mm prints courtesy of Mike Henderson and the Academy Film Archive.