Two events celebrate the history of the DeLuxe Theater.
Since its grand reopening in 2015, the DeLuxe Theater in Fifth Ward has been there as a venue for many local organizations. This week, one such organization is giving back by paying tribute to the venue with a twonight event.
The Houston Cinema Arts Society, in partnership with the theater and the Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Corporation, presents “Echoes of the DeLuxe Art Show: The 5th Ward, Black Invention, and Modernism” on Sept. 23 and 24.
But this event won’t just honor the historic, local landmark, which opened as an African American movie theater in April 1941 before shutting down in 1969. It will also commemorate the 50th anniversary of the DeLuxe Art Show, which took place in June 1971. Curated by African American abstract painter Peter Bradley and underwritten by Dominique and John de Menil, it’s known as the first, racially integrated art exhibit in the country. Works from such white artists as English sculptor Anthony Caro shared the same space as pieces from Mexican artist Virginia Jaramillo and Black painters Ed Clark and Sam Gilliam.
“One would think 1971 would be kind of late for that,” says HCAS artistic director Jessica Green. “But, apparently, that’s when it happened.” (The theater is currently presenting the exhibition “Art for the People: Celebrating 50 Years of the DeLuxe Show,” which will be on display through Sept. 23.)
The cinematic festivities kick off with a free showing of “Time,” the Oscar-nominated 2020 documentary directed by Garrett Bradley, Peter Bradley’s daughter. By screening this movie, where a Black, Louisianabased entrepreneur fights to get her incarcerated husband out of jail, Green is obviously showing that the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree in the Bradley clan.
“The DeLuxe Art Show was all about an exploration of Modernism — not just Black Modernism,” says Green. “But a lot of it was focused on Black Modernism, on Garrett Bradley’s father, as a Black Modernist artist insofar as one might define Modernism as being about breaking with form, breaking with traditions, inventing new forms. And ‘Time,’ as far as film goes, especially nonfiction films, is really an example of that.”
As for the following night, a trio of short films directed by African American filmmakers will be shown. In “(Expletive) Like a Star,” Haitian American Stefani Saintonge uses experimental storytelling and an excerpt from Toni Morrison’s 1981 novel “Tar Baby” to examine the “woman’s work” usually done by Black women.
In “Archie Bell,” DJ/ethnomusicologist Flash Gordon Parks sits down and chops it up with the local R&B icon (who celebrated his 77th birthday earlier this month). Finally, “Memory Builds the Monument” has director Isaac Yowman going back to the days of Club Matinee, the Fifth Ward spot where everyone from Aretha Franklin to James Brown and Louis Armstrong played.
For Green, this is about giving rising film artists a chance to shine. “It was a great opportunity to explore some projects that are happening and some filmmakers that are doing work about the Fifth Ward,” she says, “which is the environment the DeLuxe happens in.” (Green will be interviewing all three filmmakers for a postprogram Q&A.)
Unfortunately, thanks to the pandemic, these films won’t be playing at the DeLuxe itself. “Time” screens at the Moonstruck Drive-In, while the shorts will be shown virtually via Eventive. “We want to pay tribute any way we can,” says Green. “I’d rather do this than do nothing at all. If we have to do a virtual program and a drive-in at this point, in this time of the delta surge, so be it.”
But Green assures us that when the HCAF comes around in November, expect “the jewel box down the street” (as she calls the DeLuxe) to be one of the festival venues. “We will be at the DeLuxe, and I have faith that we are going to be at the DeLuxe because I have faith in the DeLuxe,” she says. “And the DeLuxe Theater has an incredible capacity to survive segregation, Jim Crow — everything, you know. So, we will be back at the DeLuxe, for sure.”