MAD Family Day offers countless opportunities for children to create, learn and explore! Begin your exploration in The Global Africa Project, an exhibition that demonstrates the impact of African visual culture on contemporary art, craft and design around the world. Our Artist Educators will be in the galleries to provide additional insights into the exhibition and featured works sure to engage both children and their adult companions.
With breathtaking views of Central Park that will inspire children and adults alike, Family Day provides an array of exciting activities: Artist Educators will lead intergenerational workshops where families will craft unique sound instruments inspired by the exhibition; select feature films and animated shorts provided by the African Film Festival; and a chance to meet and work with our Open Studio Artist.
But that’s not all!
Come explore neo-folklore of the African Diaspora with dancer/choreographer Adia Whitaker, Master Drummer Sekou Alaje and Ase Dance Theatre Collective. Since 2000, ASE has presented work that links modern dance, original vernacular movement and traditional dance/music theater from the African Diaspora to conceptual ideas in the human experience. ASE is dedicated to preserving the past, present and future of the African presence in the "New World".
Family Day will be a whirlwind of creativity, laughter, invention, and fun! Bring family and friends and JOIN IN!!
For more information click here or contact (212) 299-7727
Event Schedule
11 am to 3 pm: Gallery Discovery
11 am to 3 pm: Film Screening
12 pm to 3 pm: Hands-on Art Making
2 pm & 2:30 pm: Dance Workshop followed by live performance
Continuous film screening: 11:00 – 4:00
Films
REDEFINITION
Leslie To, Burkina Faso/USA, 2006, 4m
A young first-generation African girl’s world is disrupted by a unique exchange between herself, her friends and an old African immigrant.
TRAIN TRAIN MEDINA
Dout Mohamadou Ndoye, Belgium, Senegal, 2001, 7m
Things start to get messy in the Medina. The conviviality of the neighborhood is at the mercy of clamorous rabble-rousers. One day, everything falls apart. Living in common disrespect for nature and for each other brings about a time of misery which wipes out everything without leaving a trace.
ANIMATED FILMS BY PINIANG
Piniang (Ibrahim Niang), Belgium/Senegal, 2004 – 2009
Animated shorts about the environment made from found objects.
Titles:
A Bottle’s Life
Paabi
Ndakaru
THE LEGEND OF THE SKY KINGDOM
Roger Hawkins, Zimbabwe, 2003, 73m
In English
Africa’s first animated feature-length film is an adventurous tale of three orphans and their escape from an underground city of enslavement and search for the legendary Sky Kingdom. The characters and sets of this truly unique film have been made exclusively from scrap, giving birth to the world's newest animation style “Junkimation.”
The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun / Le Petite Vendeuse De Soleil
Djibril Diop Mambety, Senegal / Switzerland, 1999, 45m
In Wolof
Following Le Franc and conceived as the second installment of an unfinished trilogy of dramatic shorts entitled Tales of Little People, Mambety works in a simpler style that reflects his move beyond documenting Africa’s victimization towards envisioning the continent’s recovery. Consequently, this film is a luminous portrait of a young handicapped girl and her determination to be a street vendor of Le Soleil, the national newspaper of Senegal, against the wishes of the other street boys. It is at once a tribute to the indomitable spirit of the street children of Dakar and to the individual’s capability for transforming her situation.
Le Franc
Djibril Diop Mambety, Senegal, 1994, 45m
Le Franc is about Marigo, a penniless musician living in a shanty town, who is relentlessly harassed by his formidable landlady, until he wins the lottery.