Ganja & Hess

“A film that was ahead of its time in 1973 and, quite frankly, is still very much so today…maybe the rest of the world will eventually catch up.”—Tambay A. Obenson

An anthropologist encounters a cursed African dagger and becomes a bloodthirsty immortal in love with his assistant’s widow. Bill Gunn turned a commission to make a “black vampire film” into a quietly revolutionary, strikingly stylized look at sex, religion, class, and African American identity that turned heads at the Cannes Film Festival. The film was butchered for its US release, but the reappearance of the original cut of Ganja & Hess restored its reputation as one of the extraordinary classics of independent African American cinema. (113 mins., 35mm)