Shades of black on the silver screen

KARA WALKER is an artist who works in mediums such as painting, drawing, light projection and video, but she’s best known for her silhouettes -- delicate but trenchant works that confront the still-open wound of American slavery. Her first comprehensive career retrospective, “My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love,” opened at the UCLA Hammer Museum earlier this month, and to complement the exhibition, she selected five films.

How did she come to pick them?

“I watch movies all wrong,” says Walker. “I am not a film critic or theorist, although each of these films could be constructed as necessary viewing, relative to my interest in the construction of black identity, history and mythology making.”

Here are her thoughts on each:

Body and Soul,” 1925 (Tuesday) Oscar Micheaux is historically relevant as the earliest black independent film auteur, whose idiosyncratic critique of corruption in the black church is completely crippled by a kind of poverty of means. Some have compared his efforts as closer to Ed Wood, in that the level of direction, clarity of plot and jury-rigged production make for laughably over-sincere absurdism. . . . I want to learn from the scars, ticks and silences, the missing unknown scenes, the changes in film stock and tempo that a film like this reveals.

“I Walked With a Zombie,” 1943 (April 8) I first saw this a few years ago on TV, and now it seems to turn up every Halloween. White fears of black magic in full view.

Tamango,” 1958 (April 15) Apparently Dorothy Dandridge had a torrid affair with Curd Jurgens, who plays the ship’s captain. I’m interested in that character of tormented Negress, complicit in her sexualized construction, and finally, somewhat heroically, sacrificing her body-loving self to securing the freedom of her blackness in the form of the slave revolt at the film’s climax.

Black Orpheus,” 1959 (April 22) This is an obvious classic. The soundtrack alone I used to listen to as a teen on my cassette Walkman. It was the first film I saw as a kid that had the sort of heft of being “old” and having beautiful black people seemingly living in a world apart from blatant racism.

Beloved,” 1998 (April 29) I just love the breadth and gothic wonderland of this film’s look -- nevermind it felt nothing like my experience of Toni Morrison’s book. I think Jonathan Demme pulled a few punches. If I had the chance to revise the film, I would have dwelt longer on images that would cause most filmgoers to walk out, to spend more time in Sethe’s injured heart, feeling the terribleness of the murder she committed -- a little more Lady Macbeth, please. . . . I found Thandie Newton’s character incurably sexy.

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-- Lynell.George@latimes.com

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HAMMER SCREENINGS

WHERE: UCLA Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood

WHEN: 7 p.m. Tuesdays through April 29

PRICE: Free

INFO: (310) 443-7000, www.hammer.ucla.edu