US envoy to launch Black History Month film festival

Staff Writer | Thursday February 7, 2008 00:00

 

US Ambassador Katherine Canavan will officially Launch the film festival at the university auditorium on Monday. The launch will be followed by the viewing of  I Have a Dream, a film which depicts the legacy and vision of Dr Martin Luther King, the assassinated black American civil rights leader who had tremendous influence on the US political thought. Members of the public are invited to attend the film festival, which runs from February 12-14. All the films start at 6 pm. Films being shown for this festival generally examine the roots and conditions of slavery and go on to explore several important incidents in US race relations that led to and sparked the Civil Rights Movement.

On Tuesday evening members of the public will be treated to a viewing of The Terrible Transformation: Africans in America. The film shows how only half of the over 20 million Africans kidnapped into slavery survived the torturous trip to the so-called New World, and that many Europeans came to America as bonded labour. Interviews in the film and eye opening details uncover the little known facts of indentured servitude from its beginnings in Europe through its brutal emergence in the new world.  Members of the public are invited to witness history from a new perspective and begin to understand the economic conditions that perpetuated the slave trade; the barbaric 'middle passage' across the Atlantic Ocean aboard ships and the bitter struggles between master and servant.

The festival on Wednesday will feature, Scottsboro: An American Experience. This film traces black history to 1931 when two white women from a boxcar in Paint Rock made a shocking accusation of rape against nine black teenagers, and this began one of the most significant legal fights of the 20th Century. The trial of the nine falsely accused teenagers drew the US North and South into their sharpest conflict since the Civil War, yielded two momentous Supreme Court decisions and gave birth to the Civil Rights Movements. In addition to its historical significance, the Scottsboro story is a riveting drama about the struggles of nine innocent young men for their lives and a cautionary tale about using human beings as fodder for political causes.

The final film, which will be shown on Thursday Boycott, gives the story of Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, who refused to give up her seat in a 'whites only' section of a public bus.