Marion Stokes and Mavis Beacon Films at Schomburg

(released 12/9/2024)


There will be 2 free movie screenings on Tuesday, December 10th at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. This is part of The Kitchen's exhibition "Code Switch: Distributing Blackness, Reprogramming Internet Art".

The 2 films being screened are Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project and Seeking Mavis Beacon, both documentaries.

Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project is a mystery in the form of a time capsule. It’s about a radical Communist activist, who became a fabulously wealthy recluse archivist. Marion Stokes was secretly recording television twenty-four hours a day for thirty years. It started in 1979 with the Iranian Hostage Crisis at the dawn of the twenty-four hour news cycle. It ended on December 14, 2012 while the Sandy Hook massacre played on television as Marion passed away. In between, Marion recorded on 70,000 VHS tapes, capturing revolutions, lies, wars, triumphs, catastrophes, bloopers, talk shows, and commercials that tell us who we were, and show how television shaped the world of today. This movie screens at 1pm.

Seeking Mavis Beacon centers the most recognizable woman in technology who lives in our collective imagination. Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing taught millions globally, but the software’s Haitian-born cover model vanished decades ago. Two DIY detectives, Jazmin Jones and Olivia McKayla Ross, search for the model while posing questions about identity and artificial intelligence. This movie screens at 6pm. Following the screening, there will be a talk with The Kitchen's Legacy Russell, The Kitchen's Angelique Rosales Salgado, the film's Director Jazmin Jones, and the film's Producer Olivia McKayla Ross.

The Schomburg Center is a branch of the New York Public Library located at 515 Malcolm X Boulevard in Manhattan.

Here are links related to the event:

Marion Stokes eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com
Seeking Mavis Beacon eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com
Schomburg Center: https://www.nypl.org



Print this article



More NEWS