Stewart Bird, Rene Lichtman and Peter Gessner in association with the LBRW, Finally Got the News, 1970, still image from 16mm film in color and b&w, 55:00. Via First Run Icarus Films.

Finally Got the News
1968 Revisited: Film Screening and Discussion
7:30pm 1 May 2008
Brecht Forum - 451 West Street New York, NY
Sliding scale: $6/$10/$15

50 Artists, 50 Shots: We are All Sean Bell
7pm 3 May 2008
Brecht Forum - 451 West Street New York, NY
Free, but RSVP requested

It was with a deep sense of regret that many of us here in New York read this weekend of the acquittal of all three NYPD officers charged in the 2006 shooting of 23 year old Sean Bell, an unarmed African American who died in Jamaica, Queens at the time of his bachelor party in a hail of 50 police bullets. Brecht Forum has organized an exhibition and evening of performance in response to the outcome, inviting 50 as of yet unnamed artists to present work in 50 Artists,50 Shots: We are All Sean Bell. The exhibition and performance takes place this Saturday at the Forum. The press release reads:

This is an outcry responding to the verdict of Sean Bell's case. Artists, Community Leaders and Activists come together to educate, share, learn, mourn, and inspire all of us on the Sean Bell case, the legal system, transformation, and action. This will be a Free Event and All Performances are Voluntary. First come basis, once we have all 50 Artists the list will end.

Also at Brecht Forum this week on the occasion of International Worker's Day, the 1970 documentary film Finally Got the News will be presented along with an accompanying discussion scheduled to follow. Finally Got the News chronicles the late 60s struggles of The League of Revolutionary Black Workers in and outside the automobile factories of Detroit, Michigan, framing the movement in the complex racial and class specificities of the struggle for social justice in America. The film could well serve to prompt New Yorkers to broader thinking about the often times Francocentric historicizing of '68 as an allegedly worldwide rupture in the social fabric firmly centered and emanating from Paris out to remainder of the world.