“A tour-de-force” —The New York Times

“What is life? Is it the thing that happens between birth and when you die?” These questions animate Leslie Cuyjet’s wickedly funny and deeply moving For All Your Life, a performance and social experiment that investigates the value of Black life and death. Encapsulating numerous characters through film and live performance, Cuyjet explores and satirizes the labyrinthine world of the life insurance business, its darker links to the transatlantic slave trade, and how monetary value is affixed to human life. Are you prepared for what comes next? For All Your Life may have the answers.

Based in Brooklyn, NY, Leslie Cuyjet is a performer and choreographer who aims to conjure life-long questions of identity; confuse and disrupt traditional narratives; and demonstrate the angsty, explosive, sensitive, pioneering excellence of the Black woman. Hailed as “a potent choreographic force” by The New York Times, Cuyjet is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow and received New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards in 2019 and 2022.

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Leslie Cuyjet: For All Your Life is funded in part by the New England States Touring program of the New England Foundation for the arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Touring Program and the six New England state arts agencies.

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Filmmaker and visual artist Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) curates a selection of short films by Native North American contemporary artists relating to the themes of An Indigenous Present, including abstraction, transculturalism, and Indigenous creative practice.

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An Indigenous Present is organized by Jeffrey Gibson and Jenelle Porter, guest curators, with Erika Umali, Curator of Collections, and Max Gruber, Curatorial Assistant.

With warmest thanks, we gratefully acknowledge the generosity of the ICA’s Avant Guardian Society in making this exhibition possible.  

This exhibition is supported in part by Peggy J. Koenig, Barbara H. Lloyd, and Kim Sinatra.

Calling all teens! Join us, Fast Forward teens, for a free night of food, film, and family stories. We will screen The Seltzer Factory by local director and filmmaker, Paloma Valenzuela, and host a Q&A with her right after. We invite you to bring stories from your own families or communities to share through an interactive activity we will lead. Free food and beverages too!

More about The Seltzer Factory in Paloma’s words:

The film is a short documentary (hybrid in a way with narrative parts as well) that traces back a family story from my mother’s side: a story that set off a series of events that led my great grandmother to Cleveland ultimately saving her life, as just years later the rest of her family were sent off and killed in concentration camps in the Holocaust. I want to tell this story because I think this is a powerful story that many families can relate with — in terms of looking back, tracing back and finding those moments that led us to even still being here today. There is no doubt in my mind that if my Great Grandmother, Jewish-Hungarian woman from the town of Marghita wasn’t thrust into a move to the United States before the war took millions of lives – we would not be here today.

As a Jewish woman of color, and one of only 2 in my family on my mother’s side, I
also want to tell the story from my perspective- giving myself permission to
tell this story, even if I can feel sometimes “othered” as a Jewish
woman, I am a proud Jewish-American who is also part
Afro-Caribbean/Dominican/Latina and this is my story too.

Drop in for a looping screening of two short films presented in conjunction with Believers: Artists and the Shakers. The Quiet in the Land, produced by the ICA in 1998, shares artists’ insights into their experiences at an artist residency in the Sabbathday Lake Shaker community. Alison Halter and Maria Molteni’s Sacred Sheets (2023) was created in a transplanted Shaker house on the grounds of the Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, Massachusetts, and documents the artists’ reimaginings of certain 19th-century Shaker drawings.

Runtime: 48 minutes

The Quiet in the Land

Sacred Sheets

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Assembly follows visionary artist Rashaad Newsome as he transforms a historic military facility into a Black queer utopia, blending art, AI, and performance. Through stunning visuals and deeply personal performances, Assembly captures the transformative power of creativity as a fractured community comes together to find strength, solidarity, and liberation. 

Runtime: 99 minutes 

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Following two sold-out screenings, Eno returns to the ICA with three unique presentations of Gary Hustwit’s groundbreaking, Oscar-shortlisted documentary. Working with generative software, Hustwit created a documentary process that produces infinite variations—each with its own archival material, interviews, backstage footage, oblique strategies, and musical numbers—befitting its always experimental subject, Brian Eno. The visionary musician and artist is known for producing music for David Bowie, U2, and Talking Heads, among many others; playing with the glam-rock band Roxy Music; pioneering the genre of ambient music; and releasing more than 40 solo and collaboration albums. The New York Times describes Eno as both “unlike any other portrait of a musician” and “marvelously watchable.”

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“You do not go where your mother is not.”

Taking its title from the Saidiya Hartman text Lose your mother: A journey along the Atlantic Slave Route and inspired by a print by the graphic designer Nontsikelelo Mutiti entitled Kusina Mai/ Kusina Mai Futi, a Chivanhu saying warning against being in a foreign land without the necessary support of people that would protect and encourage you, BlackStar Projects presents an evening of short films exploring ancestral connections through time and space. These dynamic filmmakers ask, who are we if not amalgams of the people and the experiences that built us? Food, music, technology, and more work to define our culture, and our culture is what we leave behind. Featuring experimental films by Charlotte Brathwaite, Curtis Essel, Jenn Nkiru, Joseph Douglas Elmhirst, and Luis Arnías.

Post-screening discussion with filmmaker Luis Arnías and Maori Karmael Holmes, Chief Executive and Artistic Officer of BlackStar.

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Sponsored by Wagner Foundation

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Text reading BLACKSTAR in bold, black capital letters on a transparent background, reminiscent of the powerful themes found in "Lose Your Mother," recently featured at ICA Boston.

Pioneering electronic musician/avant garde artist/spiritual explorer/gender revolutionary/cult leader(?) Genesis P-Orridge has been featured in numerous films and videos, but never the full story…until now. In this “authorized” but extremely raw and personal documentary, award-winning director David Charles Rodrigues (Gay Chorus Deep South) documents the final year of P-Orridge’s existence as they grapple with mortality in the final years of their life. Featuring William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Timothy Leary, Alice Genesse (PTV), David J (Bauhaus/Love and Rockets), Nepalese monks, African Witch doctors and a special cameo by her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, plus never before seen archival treasures, performances from COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle, and Psychic TV. Very few artists lived their art, but Genesis died three times for it.

Presented in partnership with Wicked Queer, Boston’s LGBTQ+ Film Festival.

Please note: gallery admission is not included with ticket.

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Relax during the holiday weekend, and stream family-friendly short films created by kids, for kids, curated by the Boston International Kids Film Festival! The films will be available through the ICA website from Wednesday, November 27 through Sunday, December 1.

Please note there is no on-site Play Date this month. If you are in Seaport, please join us in our Art Lab installation and activity, Courage to Care!

Featured Films

About the Artists

Questions? Reach us at familyprograms@icaboston.org.

Your support helps keeps programs like this – both virtual and in-person – free and accessible. If you are able, please consider becoming a member or making a one-time gift to support the ICA. 

The ICA, in partnership with Wicked Queer Film Festival, presents the world premiere of Throuple (2024).  

Michael, terrified of pursuing his musical dreams and exploring romantic intimacy, relies on his best friend and her girlfriend for support and affection. However, when he meets a newly open married couple seeking a casual encounter, the three men enter into a relationship that is more vulnerable than any of them ever expected. 

This screening will be followed by an onstage Q+A with the filmmakers. 

Runtime: 1h 30m 
Recommended for mature audiences.

For more than three decades, Wicked Queer has celebrated the latest in queer cinema, bringing to Boston the best contemporary films, by, for, and about the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities. 

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