SPONSORED BY
Indianapolis Marriott Downtown – Sante Fe – 2nd floor
All films will be followed by a 30-minute discussion with a scholar or filmmaker
Thursday, October 4 2:00 – 9:30 PM
2:00pm – 3:15pm
IDA B WELLS: A PASSION FOR JUSTICE
William Greaves – Producer/Director
California Newsreel – www.newsreel.org (1989, 53 minutes)
Though virtually forgotten today, Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a household name in Black America during much of her lifetime (1863-1931) and was considered the equal of her well-known African American contemporaries such as Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice documents the dramatic life and turbulent times of the pioneering African American journalist, activist, suffragist and anti-lynching crusader of the post-Reconstruction period.
Discussion Facilitator: Michelle Duster (worked on the film and is also great-granddaughter of Ida B. Wells)
3:30pm – 5:30pm
THE BLACK PRESS: SOLDIERS WITHOUT SWORDS
Stanley Nelson – Producer/Director
Firelight Media – www.firelightmedia.tv (1998, 86 minutes)
A powerful and engaging account of the pioneering Black newspapermen and women who gave voice to Black America. From facilitating the migration of Southern Blacks to northern cities to honoring Black soldiers in World War II, the Black press documented people who were otherwise ignored.
Discussion Facilitator: Kim Gallon, Purdue University
5:45pm – 7:15pm
CRISPUS ATTUCKS HIGH SCHOOL: THE SCHOOL THAT OPENED A CITY
Ted Green, writer / director, WFYI Productions
(2010, 67 minutes)
The story of the segregated high school for Blacks in Indianapolis and how despite that efforts of the bigoted white establishment in that city the segregated Attacks High School became a symbol of pride and a place of excellence for the Indianapolis Black community. Also, the success of the school basketball team, which included Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson helped but it was by no means the school’s only triumph.
Discussion Facilitator: Ted Green (filmmaker)
7:30pm – 9:30pm
THE BLACK PANTHERS: Vanguard of the Revolution
Stanley Nelson, Producer/Director
Firelight Media – www.firelightmedia.tv (2015, 116 minutes)
Explores the Black Panther Party, its significance to the broader American culture, its cultural and political awakening for black people, and the painful lessons wrought when a movement derails.
Discussion Facilitator: Anton House, ASALH
Friday, October 5 9:00 AM – 10:15 PM
9:00am – 10:30am
AGENTS OF CHANGE: DEMONSTRATIONS FOR BLACK STUDIES IN THE 60’S
Frank Dawson and Abby Ginzberg – Co-Director/Producer
California Newsreel – www.newsreel.org (2016, 66 minutes)
Current struggles to make colleges welcoming and relevant for students of color continue movements which swept across campuses fifty years ago. Agents of Change, tells the timely and inspiring story of how successful protests for equity and inclusion led to establishing the first Black and Ethnic Studies departments at two very different universities, San Francisco State (1968) and Cornell (1969).
Discussion Facilitator: Marlo D. David, Purdue University
10:45am – 12:30pm
BLACK GOLD : THE HIGH PRICE OF A CUP OF COFFEE
Marc Francis and Nick Francis – Co-Director/Producer
California Newsreel – www.newsreel.org (2006, 77 minutes)
Black Gold asks us ‘to wake up and smell the coffee,’ to face the unjust conditions under which our favorite drink is produced and to decide what we can do about it. The film explains how international commodities markets are rigged against the nations of the global South. Developed countries like the U.S. subsidize agricultural products, flooding the market with low-priced goods, while demanding that poor countries remove tariff barriers and open their markets.
Discussion Facilitator: Dan Acker, Independent Scholar
12:45pm – 2:35pm
A. PHILIP RANDOLPH: FOR JOBS AND FREEDOM
Dante James – Director
California Newsreel – www.newsreel.org (1990, 86 minutes)
Ask most people who led the 1963 March on Washington and they’ll probably tell you Martin Luther King, Jr. But the real force behind the event was the man many call the pre-eminent black labor leader of the century and the father of the modern civil rights movement: A. Philip Randolph. He believed that economic rights was the key to advancing civil rights. The film takes viewers on a tour of 20th-century civil rights and labor history as it chronicles Randolph’s legendary efforts to build a more equitable society.
Discussion Facilitator: Cornelius Bynum, Purdue University
2:45pm – 4:45pm
JAMES BALDWIN: THE PRICE OF THE TICKET
Karen Thorsen – Director/Producer
California Newsreel – www.newsreel.org (1990, 87 minutes)
Writers Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, William Styron and biographer David Leeming place Baldwin’s work in the African-American literary tradition – from slave narratives and black preaching to their own contemporary work. The film skillfully links excerpts from Baldwin’s major books – Go Tell it on the Mountain, Notes of a Native Son, Another Country, The Fire Next Time, Blues for Mister Charlie, If Beale Street Could Talk – to different stages in Black-white dialogue and conflict.
Discussion Facilitator: Megan Williams, Purdue University
5:00pm – 7:30pm
BLACK THEATER: THE MAKING OF A MOVEMENT
Woodie King Jr. – Producer/Director
California Newsreel – www.newsreel.org (1978, 114 minutes)
This film documents the birth of a new theatre out of the Civil Rights activism of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. It is a veritable video encyclopedia of the leading figures, institutions and events of a movement that transformed the American stage. Amiri Baraka, Ossie Davis, James Earl Jones and Ntozake Shange describe their aspirations for a theatre serving the Black community. Excerpts of A Raisin in the Sun, Black Girl, Dutchman and For Colored Girls… reveal how these actors and playwrights laid the basis for the Black theater of the present.
Discussion Facilitator: Ida Jones, Morgan State University
7:45pm – 9:45pm
LORRAINE HANSBERRY: SIGHTED EYES, FEELING HEART
Tracy Heather Strain – Producer/Director/Writer
California Newsreel – www.newsreel.org (118 minutes 2016)
Lorraine Hansberry wrote the classic play A Raisin in the Sun. This is the first ever feature documentary on her complex life and it explores both her artistic achievements and political activism. The film features interviews with the play’s original cast members, Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Louis Gossett, Jr. and Glynn Turman, director Lloyd Richards, producer Phil Rose, supporter Harry Belafonte as well as writer Amiri Baraka along with excerpts from the 1961 Hollywood movie.
Discussion Facilitator: Arlisha R. Norwood
Saturday, October 6 9:00 AM – 9:00 PM
9:00am – 10:15am
NEGROES WITH GUNS: ROBERT WILLIAMS AND BLACK POWER
Sandra Dickson – Writer/Co-Director, Churchill Roberts – Co-Director
California Newsreel – www.newsreel.org (2005, 53 minutes)
Robert F. Williams was the forefather of the Black Power movement and broke dramatic new ground by internationalizing the African American struggle. Negroes with Guns is not only an electrifying look at an historically erased leader, but also provides a thought-provoking examination of Black radicalism and resistance and serves as a launching pad for the study of Black liberation philosophies. Insightful interviews with historian Clayborne Carson, biographer Timothy Tyson, Julian Bond, and a first- person account by Mabel Williams, Robert’s wife, bring the story to life.
Discussion Facilitator: Ajia N. Eberhart, Howard University
10:30am – noon
WHITE SCRIPTS AND BLACK SUPERMEN: BLACK MASCULINITY IN COMIC BOOKS
Jonathan Gayles – Writer/Producer/Director
California Newsreel – www.newsreel.org (2012, 56 minutes)
As excitement grows about the release of Ryan Coogler’s theatrical movie Black Panther, here is a reminder that the documentary from California Newsreel White Scripts and Black Supermen: Black Masculinities in Comic Books examines the genesis and impact of the character.
Discussion Facilitator: Dan Acker, Independent Scholar
12:15pm – 1:45pm
AT THE RIVER I STAND: THE MEMPHIS SANITATION WORKERS STRIKE
David Appleby, Allison Graham and Steven Ross – Directors
California Newsreel – www.newsreel.org (1993, 56 Minutes)
Memphis, Spring 1968 marked the dramatic climax of the Civil Rights movement. The film skillfully reconstructs the two eventful months that transformed a strike by Memphis sanitation workers into a national conflagration, and disentangles the complex historical forces that came together with the inevitability of tragedy at the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Discussion Facilitator: Dan Acker, Independent Scholar
2:00pm – 3:30pm
ASALH SHORT FILMS PROGRAM
Various independent filmmakers, 73 minutes
FOR FLINT, Brian Schulz, (2018, 17 minutes)
THE STORY OF ACCESS, Stanley Nelson, (2018, 8 minutes)
SHE TOOK JUSTICE, Gloria Browne-Marshall, (2018, 3 minutes)
’63 BOYCOTT, Gordon Quinn, Rachael Dickson, Tracye A. Mathews (2017, 30 minutes)
Colonel Charles Young, National Park Service, (2005, 15 minutes)
Discussion Facilitator: Dan Acker, Independent Scholar
3:45pm – 5:30pm
DETROIT 48202: CONVERSATIONS ALONG A POSTAL ROUTE
Pamela Sporn – Producer / Director (2018, 86 Minutes)
This film examines the rise, fall and cotroversial resurgence of one of Americas’ once great cities. The city is seen through the eyes of an African American mail carrier, Wendell Watkins, who has served the same community for 30 years. It is a unique perspective for a documentary but as Mr. Watkins turns out to be a keen observer of the urban landscape as well as human nature and somewhat of a homespun philosopher as well, this is a film worth watching and an important commentary on urban Black America.
Discussion Facilitator: Pamela Sporn (filmmaker)
5:45pm – 7:15pm
JOSIAH HENSON: THE REAL STORY OF UNCLE TOM
Jared Brock – Producer /Director (2018, 56 minutes)
Josiah Henson spent 41 years as a slave in Maryland. He was a dynamic, driven and Principled man who overcame great odds to escape slavery, improve the lives of hundreds of freed people throughout his life. Though he was the inspiration for Uncle Tom in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” he was anything but what we characterize as an Uncle Tom. Narrated by Danny Glover, this film restores a hero of the abolitionist movement to his rightful place in history.
Discussion Facilitator: Ida E. Jones, Morgan State University
7:30pm – 9:00pm
RACE: THE POWER OF ILLUSION; THE HOUSE WHERE WE LIVE
Larry Adelman – Producer
California Newsreel – www.newsreel.org (2003, 65 minutes)
This film questions the very idea of race as innate biology, suggesting that a belief in inborn racial differences is no more sound than believing that the sun revolves around the earth. The House We Live In asks, If race is not biology, what is it? This episode uncovers how race resides not in nature but in politics, economics and culture. It reveals how our social institutions “make” race by disproportionately channeling resources power, status and wealth to white people.
Discussion Facilitator: Michelle Duster, Columbia College Chicago
We thank California Newsreel, Firelight Media, and individual filmmakers for their support of this film festival.
2018 ASALH Film Festival Committee
Dan Acker, Michelle Duster, Ida Jones, Lionel Kimble, Zebulon Miletsky