Maya Cade Intro for A Different Image + Alma’s Rainbow | IU Cinema | Sept. 8, 2022

On Sept. 8, 2022, IU Cinema screened A Different Image (1982) and a new 4K restoration of Alma’s Rainbow (1994) as part of Home Is Where the Heart Is: Black Cinema’s Exploration of Home, a series curated by IU Cinema’s fall 2022 guest programmer Maya Cade of the Black Film Archive. This virtual introduction by Cade preceded the screening.
A Different Image | Directed by Alile Sharon Larkin: A highly acclaimed film, A Different Image is an extraordinary poetic portrait of a beautiful young African American woman attempting to escape becoming a sex object and to discover her true heritage. Through a sensitive and humorous story about her relationship with a man, the film makes provocative connections between racism and sexual stereotyping. The screenplay of A Different Image is published in Screenplays of the African American Experience, edited by Dr. Phyllis R. Klotman, founding director of the Black Film Center & Archive at Indiana University.
Alma's Rainbow | Directed by Ayoka Chenzira: A coming-of-age comedy-drama about three African American women living in Brooklyn, Alma’s Rainbow explores the life of teenager Rainbow Gold (Victoria Gabrielle Platt) as she enters womanhood and navigates standards of beauty, self-image, and the rights women have over their bodies. Rainbow attends a strict parochial school, studies dance, and lives with her strait-laced mother Alma (Kim Weston-Moran), who runs a hair salon in the parlor of their home and disapproves of her daughter’s newfound interest in boys. When Alma’s free-spirited sister Ruby (Mizan Kirby) returns from Paris after a ten-year absence, the sisters clash over what constitutes the “proper” direction for Rainbow’s life. Alma’s Rainbow highlights a multi-layered Black women’s world where the characters live, love, and wrestle with what it means to exert and exercise their agency.