Sonnie Wooden Screening

Join us Saturday, 10/20, at 6 PM for a screening of 3 films by Sonnie Wooden, including the world premiere of his new feature, Thunder.

Wooden will be in attendance, visiting from Chicago.

Details:

When Film Diary NYC curated its first group show at Millennium Film Workshop in 2022, the program was called “Godspeed,” borrowing its title from Sonnie Wooden’s 2019 diary film. Godspeed is a diary film about Black life in Chicago and the foreboding and melancholy present in places we call home. We always share it when visiting universities to teach about diary filmmaking. For us, Godspeed is one of the essential contemporary diary films that everyone interested in the medium should see.

But Wooden’s practice extends beyond the diary form, as evidenced by his haunting found-footage film Guillotine (2020), which Screenslate described as “conjur(ing) the sensation of walking down a dark corridor and peering into disparate rooms…a provocative exploration of contemporary race dynamics in the U.S.”

This Saturday at 6 PM, Wooden premieres his third film, and first feature length film, Thunder. The premiere will be hosted by Monira Foundation (888 Newark Ave, Jersey City, NY) and will be free to attend. Thunder builds off of techniques that Wooden developed in Godspeed and Guillotine, and incorporates auto-fictional elements to explore questions about intimacy: “What does it mean to be turned on? Intellectually, physically, spiritually, emotionally — How do you connect with someone?”