ECSTATIC REST
Alfreda’s Cinema is a sanctuary for Black film in Brooklyn.
ISSUE 1: THE UN/MAKING ISSUEI first met Lyde at Alfreda’s Cinema’s joint screening of Sambizanga and Traces of Yarrow at the Rockaway Film Festival in summer 2023. She had long, thick dreadlocks and a contagious smile. Before the screening we spoke about Alfreda’s Cinema and her programming work around New York City. The program began with Shahkeem Williams’s short Traces of Yarrow, a speculative documentary about the remnants of Downtown Brooklyn’s Underground Railroad. Williams’s piece set the scene for Sarah Maldoror’s revolutionary feature Sambizanga, a love letter to the Angolan freedom fighters and their collective struggle against the Portuguese empire. I left the screening invigorated, unable to deny the interconnectedness of oppressed people worldwide or to shake my identification with Sambizanga’s protagonist Domingos Xavier, having borne witness to the violence inflicted upon him by the colonial state. The experience inspired me to participate in her program for BAM, "Most Powerful: A Message to the Black Man," which offered space for experimental filmmakers exploring alternative and healthier forms of Black masculinity.
For over a decade, Alfreda’s Cinema has wrested Black archival, repertory, and classic cinema from the hands of the film elite, making it accessible to its intended audience. She hand-selects hidden gems and forgotten masterpieces from Black filmmakers long before the digital age, often placing them in conversation with up and coming filmmakers. Lyde compares her curation behind Alfreda’s Cinema to “digging for records.” A collector guided by intuition, she explains that she remains “open-minded and not knowing what I'm gonna find and just kind of letting the universe essentially reveal itself to me.” She thinks in cinematic terms, using films to exorcise everything from heartbreak to misogynoir, guided by Toni Morrison’s axiom that an artist’s obligation is to respond to reality.
Over the last few years, Lyde has been building Alfreda’s Cinema through a combination of community crowdfunding, private benefactors, grant writing, and her own personal investment. She’s set on having the space in Brownsville.
Over the last few years, Lyde has been building Alfreda’s Cinema through a combination of community crowdfunding, private benefactors, grant writing, and her own personal investment. She has raised $13,000 for a permanent brick-and-mortar home for Alfreda’s Cinema. She’s set on having the space in Brownsville, explaining that “as a native Brooklynite, it was a neighborhood that I was a little afraid of growing up, and rightfully so. But now, when we look at where resources are going in terms of art and culture, none of it is going to Brownsville.” Opening a physical space in New York City is especially daunting, with Lyde noting that “we're not a community that has financial generational wealth, but we do have generational knowledge, and that's also something that we can pool together.”
For Lyde, generational wealth is “knowing the lay of the land, knowing how to deal with certain property owners or how to do business in the city.” She explains, “I could be talking to an older commercial property owner, and they could give me the rundown or the best way to approach these city-run organizations.” Lyde envisions a community movie theater complete with a garden of herbs and spices, bookshelves lined with arts and culture books, and a cafe fully stocked with complimentary smoothies, fresh juices, and healthy snacks. “Investing in a community-operated organization is always gonna be a good idea,” she emphasizes. Ultimately, Lyde wants to create a safe space for our communities within the walls of her cinema. She wants it to serve as “a place to go right after school—say, for college students and they don't have a place to go over the holidays—where they can hang out at our spot and be off the street. People underestimate the impact that cinema has on a vulnerable community of people.” When asked about the future of Alfreda’s Cinema, she imagines “operating boutique cinemas all around the world, tailored to each country's BIPOC demographic.” The overarching vision is to create a vibrant film-watching experience where the screening room fills with the reverberations of Black laughter, murmured agreements, and spontaneous reactions—a big ol’ family reunion. Lyde describes the importance of cinema as a place for ecstatic rest, “just taking a break,” and “stepping out of reality for a moment and embracing an older world or being transported into a new one.”
Below: Melissa Lyde, founder of Alfreda’s Cinema.
Photos by Cameryn Hines for Alfreda’s Cinema.
For Lyde, generational wealth is “knowing the lay of the land, knowing how to deal with certain property owners or how to do business in the city.”
Despite consistently filling theaters and screening rooms, Lyde emphasizes the financial and funding barriers facing those promoting Black programming. She cites multiple theaters' refusal to publicize their sold-out Black Panther screenings as evidence of the film world's complicity in perpetuating white supremacy. Alfreda’s Cinema is fighting for a future in which there are Black-owned distribution companies and Black-owned exhibition companies. She attests to being able to count the Black-owned cinemas in the United States on her hands.
In the early 20th century, there was a vibrant Black independent film industry, with filmmakers like Oscar Micheaux producing and distributing films that spoke directly to our community. However, this independence gradually diminished as the mainstream film industry became consolidated. As streaming becomes increasingly popular and theaters wane in popularity, projects such as Alfreda’s Cinema are integral in maintaining a Black communal cinematic experience.