For the first time since its creation in 1979, For Whose Entertainment by renowned filmmaker, artist, and educator Ben Caldwell has its first public screening.

The film is a critique of Black comedians and their work, in which Caldwell asks who Black comedians are trying to appeal to and entertain most: Black audiences or white audiences? Through the use of appropriated footage and collage, the filmmaker deconstructs Blackness in entertainment in the 1960s and 1970s. For Whose Entertainment brings together important figures in Black film and scholarship, including documentary filmmaker St. Clair Bourne and cinema scholar Teshome Gabriel, to discuss issues around Black representation in film and television. Caldwell’s film oeuvre and life’s work is built around psychic healing for Black people, a self-mandate formed after serving as a soldier in the Vietnam War.

There will be a post-screening conversation with Ben Caldwell, film programmer Jheanelle Brown, and scholar professor and multimedia/film producer Robeson Taj Frazier.