2016 Black Maria Film Festival Program

Nuthouse Drawings
Documentary
by Jim Hollenbaugh
Mount Joy, PA. 6 min.
Susan Lowe is most well known as
an actress in the early films of Baltimore
native and filmmaker John Waters.
This portrait focuses on Susan’s
life as an artist, and in particular
her works known as the “Nuthouse
Drawings.” Sometimes thought of as paintings of her friends,
she actually started creating these pieces while residing in a
mental hospital. Serving as a way to battle her depression, fear,
and loneliness her “nuthouse drawings” serve as a look into
the mind of one of Baltimore’s most imaginative visual artists.
62
We Came and Stayed
Documentary
by Ed Kashi and Julie Winokur
Montclair, NJ. 9 min.
In the 1990’s, the Krueger-Scott
Cultural Center undertook
an ambitious oral history
project that conducted over
120 interviews with African-
American Newarkers who
had migrated to the city between 1910 and 1970. One of the
interviews in the collection is with Coyt Jones, who arrived
in Newark from South Carolina in 1927. The many things Mr.
Jones talks about in his interview include his son, the poet and
activist Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka, who is also the father of the
current mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka. Theirs is one in a series
of stories about families who migrated to Newark; the people
who came and stayed.