The Institute of Contemporary Art will screen Gordon Parks Jr.’s “Thomasine & Bushrod” on Feb. 17 as part of Exposure: Nu West, a curated film series examining how Black filmmakers have reimagined the American West. Doors open at 6 p.m., with the screening beginning at 6:30 p.m.

The 1974 film offers a charming, exciting, and soulful reinterpretation of the Bonnie and Clyde story that merges Blaxploitation aesthetics with outlaw mythmaking, according to a news release from the institute. Parks turns the Western on its head, pairing radical politics with sweeping romance and rebellion to present a vision of freedom born from fugitivity and desire, the release states. 

For Black History Month, the ICA has invited recurring guest and Exposure cinema founder Brandon Shillingford to curate a series examining how four Black filmmakers rework and reckon with the American West in their narratives. From Gordon Parks to Charles Burnett to Jordan Peele, these filmmakers have used the American West not just as backdrop, but as battleground, wrestling with inheritance, legacy, and American mythmaking, the release states. 

The Nu West series spans the traditional West to the transcendent, according to the institute. Charles Burnett’s “To Sleep with Anger” translates Southern folklore and mysticism into South Central Los Angeles, exploring how the past haunts a middle-class Black family. Jordan Peele’s “Nope” interrogates spectacle, authorship, and the cinematic hagiography that built America’s mythology through a story of a California ranch and an otherworldly phenomenon. 

Together, these films pose essential questions. Who gets to claim the frontier? How do Black filmmakers reshape a mythology built to burden them? What happens when the West, as land, genre, and legend, becomes a site of spiritual and cinematic reckoning? 

The Exposure Nu West schedule also includes “Nope” on Feb. 6, “Thomasine & Bushrod” on Feb. 17, and “To Sleep with Anger” on Feb. 25.