A WORD FROM OUR PROGRAMMER—7/21/21

Cinema friends, 

Ragtag Cinema is a nonprofit, and amidst annual flurries of cinematic activity it can be easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees—beyond big and little pictures alike, what is the big picture here? Certainly, we exist to celebrate cinema, but core to that mission are education and community-building.

We educate about film and through film: cultivating appreciation and lifelong critical curiosity. To this end, Ragtag is committed to fostering community-wide Media Literacy: How does media influence culture, and how does culture influence media? Who is the author and who is the audience? What are we looking at and how might we look at it differently? Can we enjoy the stories we tell and challenge them at the same time?

Ultimately, though, we can’t do any of this if we don’t aspire towards a city that works for people first.

So how do we do this? Let us show you. 

The Show Me series partners with five groups that are dedicated to equity, inclusion, and unity—The Asian Affairs Center at the University of Missouri; Boone County Community Against Violence; The Center Project; Four Directions at the University of Missouri; and ROCK The Community—to challenge the cinema canon, interrogate form, intention, reaction, and representation, and start meaningful dialogue situated in the city and beyond.

Co-curated and co-presented with ROCK the Community, we screen Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah tomorrow evening at 7pm, followed by a conversation around community power with Dr. Stephen Graves, Associate professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Department of Black Studies, University of Missouri, and ROCK the Community’s own Rodney March. 

Judas and the Black Messiah screens as part of the Show Me series, Thursday, July 22 at 7pm. Tickets are free and only available at the box office beginning that day starting at 12pm.

Be good to each other,

Ted