Discusses “Music Videos, Hip Hop, and Strategies of Resistance” as part of a Sonic Cinema: Sounding Resistance series
Audiences are invited to join Princeton University students to screen recent independent films and videos and meet filmmakers, musicians and scholars as part of a semester-long series focusing on sound in film, Sonic Cinema: Sounding Resistance. The series is presented by the Visual Arts Program of the Lewis Center for the Arts and is in conjunction with the spring course “Sonic Cinema: Music, Noise, and the Moving Image” taught by Visiting Associate Professor Amy Herzog, who curated the series. Films and videos will be screened on select Tuesdays through the end of April. Filmmakers, musicians and scholars associated with the work will be on hand to discuss the work and answer questions from the audience. Tickets are available to the public at princetongardentheatre.org. Tickets are free to Princeton University students, faculty and staff with ID at the Garden Theatre box office.
Hip hop pioneer Darryl “DMC” McDaniels. Photo courtesy Darryl “DMC” McDaniels
“Music Videos, Hip Hop, and Strategies of Resistance” on April 11 at 7:30 p.m. will feature a visit by hip hop pioneer Darryl “DMC” McDaniels and screenings of his music videos at the Garden Theatre at 160 Nassau Street, which is collaborating with the Lewis Center on this event. McDaniels, of the legendary rap group Run-DMC, will discuss his work and answer questions from the audience. As a member of Run-DMC, McDaniels had a significant influence on the rise of rap and hip hop music and on popular culture, selling over 30 million singles and albums worldwide.
Formed in 1981, Run-DMC were the first rappers to earn a gold album, to earn a platinum album, to go multi-platinum, to have their videos played on MTV, to appear on American Bandstand and Saturday Night Live, and the first rap band to appear on the covers of Rolling Stone and Spin. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009. McDaniels has published an autobiography, entitled King of Rock: Respect, Responsibility, and My Life with Run-DMC, that explores his experiences of rising to fame in the music industry. He was also the subject of the VH1 documentary DMC: My Adoption Journey, which chronicles his efforts to find his birth mother, and, in 2006, he was awarded the Congressional Angels in Adoption Award for his involvement in promoting adoption and working with the foster care system. In 2014, McDaniels branched out into comics and created his own publishing company, Darryl Makes Comics, which explores 1980s New York City and the issues of marginalized communities.
The artists, scholars, and films in the series were selected by Herzog, a media historian whose research spans a broad range of interdisciplinary subjects, including film, philosophy, popular music, urban history, pornography, gentrification, parasites, amusement parks, and dioramas. She is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Queens College and Coordinator of the Film Studies Program at the CUNY Graduate Center. Herzog is the author of Dreams of Difference, Songs of the Same: The Musical Moment in Film (University of Minnesota Press, 2010) and co-editor, with Carol Vernallis and John Richardson, of The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media (Oxford, 2013). Her writing has appeared in several collections and journals, and she has presented her work at numerous venues including the Guggenheim Museum of New York, the New Museum, Dixon Place, New York Academy of Medicine, and the Coney Island Museum. She is currently serving as Programmer-in-Residence at the Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn. Her most recent research project explores the history of peep show arcades in New York City’s Times Square.
The course explores the use of sound in relation to moving images, including film scoring, musicals, soundtracks, music videos, and experimental sound and video art. Class discussions focus on digital technology and media soundscapes, and screenings include Hollywood blockbusters and immersive media to fine art, video games, and independent cinema.
The series continues with filmmaker Lizzie Borden on April 18 and artists Valerie Tevere and Angel Nevarez on April 25, both events also at the Princeton Garden Theatre.
This series is supported through the John Sacret Young ’69 Lecture Series fund. Sacret Young is a 1969 graduate of Princeton and an author, producer, director, and screenwriter. He has been nominated for seven Emmy Awards and seven Writers Guild of America (WGA) Awards, winning two WGA Awards. He is perhaps best known for co-creating, along with William F. Broyles Jr., China Beach, the critically acclaimed ABC-TV drama series about medics and nurses during the Vietnam War, and for his work on the television drama The West Wing. Young has also received a Golden Globe and a Peabody Award, and his original mini-series about the Gulf War, Thanks of a Grateful Nation, was honored with his fifth Humanitas Prize nomination.
The Princeton Garden Theatre is a member-supported nonprofit movie theater in the heart of downtown Princeton. With a focus on arthouse and independent titles, the theater is also a home for family films, local filmmakers, classic Hollywood cinema, community and university events. The Garden Theatre is an organization of film-lovers dedicated to the preservation of historic movie theaters and the celebration of the community film-going experience. The Garden was recently voted as best movie theater in New Jersey by NJ.com.
