Blackness and Identity-Making in Popular Music: Film Screening of Milli Vanilli and Conversation with Alexander Ghedi Weheliye and Matthew D. Morrison
When:
Friday, Oct 04, 2024 6:00p -
8:00p
Friday, Oct 04, 2024 6:00p -
8:00p
Where:
Goethe-Institut Boston
170 Beacon St.
Boston, Massachusetts 02116
Admission:
FREE
Hosted by:
Categories:
Accessible Spots, Date Idea, Movies, Music
Event website:
https://bit.ly/4eOlmKE
We encourage visitors to our special exhibition Made in Germany? Art and Identity in a Global Nation to attend a special screening of the film Milli Vanilli followed by a conversation at the Goethe-Institut Boston.
The documentary Milli Vanilli (MRC and Keep on Running Pictures) tells the story of the popular musical duo Robert “Rob” Pilatus and Fabrice “Fab” Morvan. Pilatus and Morvan became fast friends during their youth in Germany, and they shared a similar upbringing and future goal: to become famous superstars. In a few short years, their dreams came true.
Following the film screening, a conversation will take place between professor Alexander Ghedi Weheliye (Brown University) and professor Matthew D. Morrison (New York University). Taking the 2023 documentary as the starting point, their discussion will focus on the role of Blackness and identity-making in the history of German popular music. Milli Vanilli’s late 1980s racialized performance fits into a longer tradition of the performance of Blackness and Blackface in Germany during 1970s and 1980s Eurodisco. In this context, Blackness forms an integral part of how Germany imagines itself in relation to the rest of the world. With the help of sound samples, Weheliye and Morrison will offer insight into issues of cultural appropriation that have plagued popular music in Germany and the United States for decades.
Speakers:
Alexander Ghedi Weheliye is the Malcolm S. Forbes Professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media and the Brown Arts Institute at Brown University, where he teaches critical theory, Black literature and culture, gender and sexuality studies, social technologies, and popular culture.
Matthew D. Morrison, a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, is an associate professor in the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
About the film:
Milli Vanilli, 2023 (dir. Luke Korem; MRC and Keep on Running Pictures; English; 106 min.)
Admission to this film at the Goethe-Institut Boston is free, but seating is limited. Registration is encouraged but not required. Please visit the Goethe Institut Boston website for more information. For any questions, contact Karin Oehlenschlaeger at [email protected] at the Goethe-Institut Boston.
