Ebony Beach Club Channel is an experimental documentary by artists April Banks and Glen Wilson thatimagines both the “would-be-past” and the “could-be-future" of a story interrupted by eminent domain.
About Ebony Beach Club Channel
In the 1950s, Los Angeles entrepreneur Silas White purchased a piece of property at the intersection of Pico and Ocean Avenue blocks away from Inkwell Beach, one of the few beaches Black Angelenos were permitted to frequent at the time. White envisioned a place where Black people could relax, recreate, and be restored by the ocean free from the violence and surveillance that typically characterized trips to the beach elsewhere in segregated Southern California. However, shortly after construction began, the city of Santa Monica seized the land using eminent domain. Thus, the Ebony Beach Club was never completed.
The proposed documentary film, Ebony Beach Club Channel, will be a portal into Silas White’s unrealized dream. To introduce audiences to White’s vision for the Club, the film will engage and immerse viewers in visual, virtual, and sonic experiences not traditionally associated with standard documentaries. This documentary film experience will culminate in a multi-layered lyrical narrative that weaves together archival materials, interviews, renderings of preserved architectural drawings, community-sourced short stories, and animation. Additionally, the artists will fill in the gaps of history with storytelling, by composing a series of original vignettes and [re]creations of would-be historical scenes.
April Banks and Glen Wilson are engaged in a collaborative world-building endeavor that imagines alternative histories and possible futures for the Ebony Beach Club. The artists's individual creative practices resonate at multiple intersections which span photography, sculpture, public art, physical and virtual environments, short-form and experimental filmmaking, community, and collective memory. Together, they are interested in documenting the living history of a dream interrupted, interrogating patterns of land theft, and strengthening the momentum of the present reparations movement in California.
