‘In Los Angeles, we had a wonderful fine artists in the black community, and one of the things they advocated actively for is this idea called assemblage. They collected things that most people thought were useless, and out of it they made their work, their eloquent work, right?. And that went on for over forty years – and it still continues to the day. They made sculptures out of collages, made out of remnants from the burning buildings. Some of the people bought that sensibility to filmmaking. We realised that there was an affinity for this approach; one that said that things aren’t useless, that they can be used to articulate a point.’

Billy Woodberry (Bless Their Little Hearts) and Barbara McCullough (Fragments, Shopping Bag Spirits and Freeway Fetishes: Reflections on Ritual Space), two prominent figures of the movement discuss the environment that caused the L.A. Rebellion to brew, the film school that nurtured it and its aftermath. Stoffel Debuysere mediated the talk for Courtisane.

(Note: the audio quality is slightly murky in spots, but the overall lesson is: things aren’t useless).