The Juniper Tree
This program is presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive screening series Ross Lipman and The Archival Impermanence Project. Learn more at cinema.ucla.edu.
In-person: film preservationist and author Ross Lipman, Archive Head of Preservation Jillian Borders.
Four Women (1975)
Set to Nina Simone’s stirring ballad of the same name, Julie Dash’s dance film features Linda Martina Young as strong “Aunt Sarah,” tragic mulatto “Saffronia,” sensuous “Sweet Thing” and militant “Peaches.” Kinetic camerawork and editing, richly colored lighting, and meticulous costume, makeup and hair design work together with Young’s sensitive performance to turn longstanding Black female stereotypes to oblique, critical angles.
16mm, color, 7 min. Director: Julie Dash. With: Linda Martina Young.
The Juniper Tree (1990)
While still a graduate film student at UCLA, writer-director Nietzchka Keene used a Fulbright Fellowship to shoot this stunning folk horror story adapted from a Grimm fairytale on location in Iceland. Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, The Juniper Tree features a pre-Sugarcubes Björk in her film debut as one of a pair of sisters (the other played by Bryndis Petra Bragadóttir) who are cast to the rocky wilds after their mother is accused of witchcraft and burned alive. The harsh but beautiful Icelandic landscape captured in dazzling black and white by cinematographer Randolph Sellars feels, as Ross Lipman writes, “so palpable it almost functions as a character.”
35mm, b&w, 79 min. Director/Screenwriter: Nietzchka Keene. With: Björk, Bryndis Petra Bragadóttir, Valdimar Örn Flygenring.
The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a division of UCLA Library, and presents its public programs in the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer, among other venues. For more information about the Archive, visit cinema.ucla.edu.
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