May 2 6:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Saturday, May 2nd. Doors open at 6PM, Starts at 6:30PM.
Pay What You Can (Suggested $10)
Growing up, we are first held by the voice of our mothers—its rhythms teaching us how to listen, how to imagine, how to feel our way through the world before we fully understand it. A lullaby can soothe, but it can also shield, shaping what is heard and what remains unsaid. In this opening program, A Mother’s Lullaby, Milisuthando Bongela’s Milisuthando returns to the fragile architectures of such protection, tracing a childhood in the Transkei where the violences of apartheid were both ever-present and eerily obscured. Through a lyrical weaving of memory, poetry, and image, the film lingers in the dissonance between what we inherit and what we later come to know—how love can coexist with omission, and how care can be entangled with erasure. In dialogue, Jonathon Haffner’s live performance extends this meditation, improvising a sonic space where memory is not fixed but continually reworked. Together, they ask: what songs carried us through, and what truths did they quiet?
______________________
Songs to Quell the Monster is a four-part programming series that gathers films and live performances that channel the defiant spirit of songs across histories and borders. Moving between the intimate and the collective, these works confront authoritarianism, colonial violence and and erasure–transforming memory, voice and image into acts of refusal. A reminder that while the monster is vast, so too are our songs.
______________________
Milisuthando Bongela-Davis (b.1985, South Africa) is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, cultural worker and artist. Her career began in the fashion industry but the last 16 years have seen her traverse the worlds of music, art, media and film – continually turning towards indigenous knowledge systems.
She was Arts Editor for the Mail & Guardian’s Friday section and was host and co-producer of the podcast Umoya: On African Spirituality with Dr. Athambile Masola. Her debut feature film, a personal essay documentary titled MILISUTHANDO had its in competition world premier at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and selected for MoMA’s New Directors / New Films programme 2023 before opening the 2023 Encounters Documentary Film Festival. It was nominated and won awards for its groundbreaking form, subject matter and approach to personal filmmaking.
She is an inaugural fellow of the 2020 Adobe Women at Sundance Fellowship and in 2024, she made an experimental silent film INGQUMBO commissioned by Neo Muyanga and William Kentridge’s Centre for the Less Good Idea in Johannesburg.
After a theatrical run at Anthology Film Archives in May 2025, MILISUTHANDO was released on The Criterion Channel on 1 October 2025 and is independently distributed in Africa and as of April 7th 2026, is distributed by The Tape Collective in the UK and EU.
She is currently an Artist in Residence at Headlands Centre for the Arts in the Marin Headlands of California where she is developing her second film.
While she has lived in New York since 2024, the subject of her work is always rooted in South Africa
Jonathon Haffner – Recently based in Los Angeles after more than two decades within New York City’s downtown music, film, and art scenes, he has built a career across genres, disciplines, and international stages.
For over a decade, he performed and recorded with filmmaker and poet Jonas Mekas, accompanying live poetry and creating live scores for Mekas’ films. These collaborations included performances at the Serpentine Gallery in London, Hiro Ballroom in New York City, and The Stone, founded by John Zorn.
Haffner also toured extensively with Butch Morris, appearing on more than 15 recordings with the late conductor in several different ensembles, including Orchestra Slang and Nublu Orchestra.
He performs with the Great Lakes Quartet, led by Wadada Leo Smith, alongside the late Jack DeJohnette and John Lindberg. Their release on TUM Records was named a Top 10 Box Set of the Year by The New York Times, and the ensemble has performed at the Berlin Jazz Festival, the Leibnitz Festival in Austria, and Jazz em Agosto in Lisbon, Portugal.
Haffner has also toured and recorded with Red Baraat, Cyndi Lauper, and Louis Cole, appearing on Cole’s albums and video productions and performing with him in New York and Los Angeles.
His solo album, Life on Wednesday, produced by David Binney and featuring Craig Taborn and Wayne Krantz, was invited to perform at the North Sea Jazz Festival in a concert also featuring Nasheet Waits and Marc Ducret. Following North Sea, he led his own ensembles at the Vilnius Jazz Festival in Lithuania, as well as the Nublu Jazz Festival and Winter Jazzfest in NYC.
Additionally, he co-leads projects with Kenny Wollesen and Tony Scherr, released Rasa Rasa on John Zorn’s Tzadik label, performs with Rocket Sci on Nublu Records, and co-leads Big Shapes with Dave Harrington of Darkside and Max Jaffe. Big Shapes will release its second album in 2026.
Advik Beni and Nehal Vyas are programmers and filmmakers based in Los Angeles. Originally from South Africa and India respectively, their curatorial work draws from oral traditions, nationhood, citizenship, mythology, and family histories. They are committed to building community spaces where filmmaking serves as an ally.