As part of LA Philharmonic’s Rock My Soul festival, classical singer and festival curator Julia Bullock screens two films by L.A. Rebellion filmmaker Barbara McCullough: Water Ritual #1: An Urban Rite of Purification (1979) and Shopping Bag Spirits and Freeway Fetishes: Reflections on Ritual Space (1981). In Water Ritual #1, McCullough, in collaboration with performer Yolanda Vidato, examines Black women’s ongoing struggles for spiritual and psychological space through improvisational, symbolic acts. The film was made in an area in Watts that had been cleared to make way for the I-105 freeway, but ultimately abandoned. For Shopping Bag Spirits and Freeway Fetishes: Reflections on Ritual Space, McCullough conversed with other Los Angeles-based Black artists about the role of ritual in Black life and creative practice.

Presented in partnership with the LA Philharmonic.