Danielle Eliska Film Screening

Join the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) for a captivating evening featuring a double feature screening of two films by local filmmaker Danielle Eliska: Take Flight [5 minutes] and Serial Monogamous [26 minutes]. This special event is followed by an insightful discussion led by Danielle Eliska herself, where she will delve into her filmmaking practice and explore the recurring theme of intergenerational Black love that permeates her work.

Serial Monogamous (short film) is a 26-minute silent visual short narrative film about two people who can’t get out of their own way and rise into love. It was inspired by a culmination of Oscar Micheaux’s collective body of work, the French New Wave, and the brilliant, collaborative flow of jazz legend Miles Davis and his score for the 1958 noire/crime film soundtrack, “Ascenseur pour l’échafaud”.

Take Flight (short film) is an artistic film about Black agency (escaping all forms of captivity) by way of strength from Ancestral Spirits and veneration and the duality of their existence alongside us today. By weaving in aspects of Thornton and Lucie Blackburn’s story, this film honors all ancestors who came before us by way of Africa, through the perils of slavery and forced resilience with evidence of home still alive in their souls. That same power has been passed down to their descendants—fierce and sure standing—because of their determination toward freedom. With Aneb Kgositsile’s poem, Sacraments as narration, the imagery of Take Flight captures the fullness of Black awakening, glory and splendor.

“One of these mornings
You gonna rise up singing
Then you’ll spread yo’ wings
and you’ll take to the sky.”
—“Summertime”, Heyward and Gershwin, 1935.

Take Flight was commissioned for Mario Moore’s solo exhibition, MIDNIGHT AND CANAAN, and premiered Fall 2022 at the David Klein Gallery. NOTE: FLASH WARNING.

Danielle Eliska is an award-winning screenwriter, film director, photographer, entrepreneur and educator from Detroit. She’s a co-creator of an experimental art community, A Love Letter to Detroit. Danielle received her MFA in Dramatic Writing in Film from New York University and has gained notable screenwriting, film, and photography recognition. Danielle was one of the inaugural grant recipients of the 2019 Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment and New York Foundation for the Arts [MOME NYFA] ‘Made in NY’ Women’s Fund in Film for her short narrative film, Shield. She was a 2022 Womxnhouse Detroit Resident, a 2022 Sesame Street Workshop Writer’s Room Fellow, a 2023 CultureSource + Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Flourish Fund grant recipient and a 2023 Cranbrook Academy of Art Photography Department Artist-in-Residence. Danielle is a 2024 Seed and Bloom: Detroit Fellow.