The Hagan Center Video Collection
a | b | c | d | f | g | h | i | j | l | m | o | p | r | s | t | w
A.
Philip Randolph: For Jobs and Freedom
This video begins to restore a brilliant civil rights activist to his
place as a key figure in 20th Century American History.
A
Question of Color: Color Consciousness in Black America
Directed by Kathe Sandler
This video explores the devastating effect of a caste system based on
how closely skin color, hair texture and facial features conform to
a European ideal. It provides a unique window for anyone who has experienced
prejudice.
A
Walk in the Night
Director: Mickey Madoda Dube 1998, 78 minutes
In English and Afrikaans with English subtitles
This is one of the first films from a new generation of talented young
black South African filmmakers who have become active since the overthrow
of apartheid in 1994. Dube’s debut feature adapts Alex La Guma’s
celebrated 1962 novella of the same name into a fast-paced crime thriller
in present day Johannesburg. This film recounts a single terrible night
during which the fragile world of Mikey Adonis, a young steelworker,
disintegrates. Things turn for the worst when Mikey unintentionally
murders a broken down Irish actor and Mikey’s girlfriend’s
brother is falsely accused of the crime. The tragic cycle is only brought
to a close by an unexpected intervention suggesting how things in the
new South Africa might be different.
Africans
in America: America’s Journey Through Slavery
Part I: The Terrible Transformation 90 minutes
This episode, narrated by Angela Bassett, examines the origins of one
of the largest forced human migrations in record history. After the
arrival of the first Africans in Virginia in 1619, the British colonies
lay the groundwork for a system of racial slavery, which generates profits
that ensure the colonies’ growth and survival.
Africans
in America: America’s Journey Through Slavery
Part II: Revolution 90 minutes
While the American colonies challenge Britain for independence, American
slavery is challenged from within as men and women fight to define what
America will be. When the War of Independence is won, black people seize
on the language of freedom even while the new nation’s Constitution
codifies slavery and oppression as a national way of life. Angela Bassett
narrates this episode.
Africans
in America: America’s Journey Through Slavery
Part III: Brotherly Love 90 minutes
In Philadelphia, during the first 50 years of the new nation, freedmen
and fugitive slaves push the country to live up to the promises made
in its Constitution. But with the invention of cotton gin, slavery expands
into America’s western frontier, and a revolution in Haiti inspires
slave rebellions throughout the southern United States. Angela Bassett
narrates this episode.
Africans
in America: America’s Journey Through Slavery
Part IV: Judgment Day 90 minutes
As the nation expands westward, slavery becomes the most divisive issue
in American life. Abolitionists struggle to bring the institution down
and the nation is tested as never before. When tensions over slavery
erupts into violence, Americans are forced to consider how long the
country can continue as a democracy built on the profits of bondage.
Angela Bassett narrates this episode.
Afrique,
Je Te Plumerai: Africa, I Will Fleece You
Directed by Jean-Maria Teno 88 minutes 1992
French with English Subtitles
This video provides an overview of one hundred years of cultural imperialism
in Africa. Director Jean Marie Teno uses Cameroon, the only African
country colonized by three European powers, for a case study of the
devastation of traditional African societies by imposed colonial cultures.
Are
We Different?
Produced by John Arthos 27 minutes
This film gives voices to African-American students around the country
as they discuss issues of race, racism, and race relations. The discussions
range from whether stylistic differences between whites and blacks are
superficial or profound, to the causes and nature of anger and frustration
in the black community. Students talk about black culture, spirituality
and energy.
At
the River I Stand
Directed by David Appleby, Alison Graham, and Steven Ross. 56 minutes
1993
This video reconstructs the two eventful months in the spring of 1968,
which led to the tragic death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the
dramatic climax of the Civil Rights Movement.
Black
Athena
Black Athena examines Cornell Professor Martin Bernal's iconoclastic
study of the African origins of Greek civilization and the explosive
academic debates it provoked. This film offers a balanced, scholarly
introduction to the disputes on multi-culturalism, "political correctness"
and Afrocentric curricula sweeping college campuses today.
In Black Athena, Prof. Bernal convincingly indicts 19th century scholars
for constructing a racist "cult of Greece" as a purely Aryan
origin for Western culture. He accuses these classicists of suppressing
the numerous connections between African and Near Eastern cultures and
early Greek myth and art. Black Athena can help students begin to distinguish
between sound scholarship and cultural bias - whether inherited from
the past or imposed by the present.
Black
Is...Black Ain't
Directed by Marlon Riggs 86 minutes 1995
This video weaves together the testimony of those whose complexion,
class, gender, speech or sexuality has made them feel "too black"
or "not black at enough." Bill T. Jones, Essex Hemphill, Angela
Davis and bell hooks recall their own struggles to discover a more inclusive
definition of "blackness".
Black
Panther/San Francisco State: On Strike
2 titles on one cassette
Black Panther
This is the film the Black Panthers used to promote their cause. Shot
in Oakland, San Francisco and Sacramento in 1969, this exemplar of Sixties
activist filmmaking traces the development of the Black Panther organization.
Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton describes the origins of the Panthers
in an interview from jail, Minister of Information, Eldridge Cleaver
explains the Panthers appeal to the black community, and Chairman Bobby
Seale enumerates the Panther 10 Point Program as Panthers march and
demonstrate.
Blacks
and Jews
The fault line between Blacks and Jews is one of the most visible symbols
of America's racial divide. Now a new film, made collaboratively by
Jewish and Black filmmakers, goes behind the headlines and the rhetoric
to try to heal the misunderstanding and mistrust. Blacks and Jews were
acclaimed at this year's Sundance Film Festival as initiating a frank
yet constructive nationwide dialogue between these two traditional allies.
During the Civil Rights movement Blacks and Jews fought together for
equal rights. With the waning of that movement, differences in economic
status caused both groups to turn inward. Positions hardened around
such divisive issues as affirmative action in the schools, Louis Farrakhan's
anti-Semitism, even Jewish influence in Hollywood.
Blacks and Jews cuts through the sensationalized media coverage and
the stereotypes to reexamine key conflicts from the point of view of
activists on both sides. The Crown Heights riots dramatized the distrust
between Blacks and Jews. But we meet a black man who saved a Hassid's
life and a Jewish youth leader who brings the youth of both communities
together.
During the 1960s, "blockbusting" in Chicago pitted Jewish
owners against black homebuyers. A rabbi recounts how he took on real
estate speculators and racism in the Jewish community as a leader of
an interethnic coalition. A former Black Muslim leader explains the
attraction of the Nation of Islam to many African Americans and why
he finally left the movement. When a group of black teens in Oakland
laughed during Shindlers List, it launched a feeding frenzy among the
press and a political circus for demagogues on both sides. Students
and teachers tell what really happened and how they took steps to increase
understanding of both the Holocaust and slavery.
Blacks and Jews offers no Panglossian assurances of easy racial harmony.
But screenings of this film can cut through the anger and emotion on
both sides demonstrating that dialogue and cooperation can only be based
in a serious effort to understand and value the experience of others.
Synagogues and churches, campus ministries and student advisors, community
organizers and anti-racism activists, will all find Blacks & Jews
an invaluable new tool for increasing mutual understanding and building
coalitions for social justice, not just between Blacks and Jews, but
between all ethnic groups.
Blue
Eyed
Directed by Bertram Verhagg 93 minutes 1995
This video offers every American a chance to sit-in on a full-length
workshop with America's most dynamic diversity trainer, Jane Elliot.
In Blue Eyed, she discriminates among a group of 40 typical Midwestern
adults based strictly on their eye color. It's a lesson viewers are
ever likely to forget.
Color
Adjustment
In Color Adjustment, Marlon Riggs - Emmy winning producer of Ethnic
Notions - carries his landmark studies of prejudice into the Television
Age.
Color Adjustment traces 40 years of race relations through the lens
of prime time entertainment, scrutinizing television's racial myths
and stereotypes. Narrated by Ruby Dee, the 88 minute documentary allows
viewers to revisit some of television's most popular stars and shows,
among them Amos and Andy, The Nat King Cole Show, I Spy, Julia, Good
Times, Roots, Frank's Place and The Cosby Show. But this time around,
Riggs asks us to look at these familiar favorites in a new way. The
result is a stunning examination of the interplay between America's
racial consciousness and network primetime programming.
The story, told with wit, passion, and verve, shows how African Americans
were allowed into America's primetime family only insofar as their presence
didn't challenge the mythology of the American Dream central to television's
merchandising function. It demonstrates how the networks managed to
absorb divisive racial conflict into the familiar non-threatening formats
of prime-time television.
As engaging as it is perceptive, Color Adjustment sheds light on the
racial implications of America's favorite addiction - television watching.
It will help viewers reexamine America's and their own attitudes towards
race.
Divine
Carcasse
Divine Carcasse is an unusual hybrid, a half fictional, half ethnographic
film. It is a study in cultural contrast, between a European view of
reality and an African one.
In the opening shot, a mysterious cargo ship approaches the Benin coast
much, one imagines, as did the brigantines of the first European explorers.
In its hold, however, is a 1955 Peugeot imported to Cotonou by Simon,
an expatriate European philosophy teacher. His friends deride the car
as an unreliable means of transport but relish its nostalgia value but
their view of the past extends no further than their own youth in the
50's. Of course, a car can be a fetish object in European culture; a
friend suggests Simon can use it to pick up women. But it remains primarily
a disposable commodity to these complacent members of the consumer society
who drive along singing, "My life is on credit and in stereo."
The film's focus rapidly shifts from the European expatriate community
to urban, modernizing Africa, a transitional space between these two
worldviews. Simon in frustration gives the decrepit car to Joseph, his
cook, who hopes to ride it to financial success and independence. When
he shows it off in his natal village, the crowd is shocked that the
French call such cars "ancestors" since they look at their
own ancestors as "guides and protectors." Joseph's wife, fearing
the villagers' envy, asks for the ancestors' intervention on the grounds
that the car will lift the fortunes of the entire family line. But Joseph's
taxi business is a failure and during a "ghost dance" or egungun
ritual the ancestors tell him that his recently deceased maternal uncle
has cursed him and must be placated. The ancestors still don't seem
much help; Joseph is forced to sell the car to a garage which discards
it as scrap.
At this point the film's fictional narrative disappears entirely to
be replaced by a nearly documentary study of an actual Beninois metalworker
making a fetish commissioned by the village of Ouassou. We watch as
he uses pre-industrial techniques to turn the car door into long strips
of metal, presumably in imitation of the straw garments worn by the
other fetishes. This fetish, the ram god, Agbo, master of the night,
symbolized by the horns of the crescent moon, is brought back by four
village elders by boat - the same way the car arrived at the film's
beginning. The film ends when the statue is accepted or recognized by
the joyful villagers and joins the other fetishes in the zangbeto society
supposedly a kind of night watch for the village. Dark falls but the
fetish's eyes blaze - perhaps amazed at its metamorphosis from a car
into a god who sees in the dark.
Divine Carcasse can also be seen as an allegory of Europe's encounter
with Africa. Colonialism brought to Africa a version of their own technological
civilization, albeit a run-down, and second hand one, which post-independent
African states have attempted to make work only to have it fall apart
entirely. In the end Africa must rely on its own resources and traditions
so that as the film moves forward it also moves backward into a pre-colonial
past culture. Perhaps such a simple "return to the ancestors"
is impractical in a relentlessly modernizing, globally inter-connected
world. But Africa like much of the world is struggling to develop its
own version of modernism in which objects can be produced not for profit
or for supernatural beings but simply for human use.
Divine Carcasse, in its awareness of the ambiguous relationship between
fiction and documentary, builds on the work of pioneering ethnographer
Jean Rouch. It deliberately does not ask us to choose between African
and Western perspectives but to recognize both as equally valid and
equally fictional.
Frantz
Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask
Director: Isaac Julien 50 minutes, 1992
This film explores one of the most influential theorists of the anti-colonial
movements of our century. Fanon’s two works Black Skin, White Mask
and The Wretched of the Earth were pioneering studies of the psychological
impact of racism on both colonized and colonizer.
This film follows Fanon from his birth in 1925 on the French island
of Martinique, through his medical training in France and subsequent
disillusionment, which resulted in Black Skin, White Mask. Fanon died
of leukemia in 1961 as nations across Africa were winning the independence
for which he fought.
Goin’
To Chicago
Producer/Director: George King 71 minutes, 1994
This film chronicles the great migration of African Americans from the
rural South to the cities of the North and West. It tells this history
through the personal stories of a group of older Chicagoans born in
the Mississippi Delta. A newspaper editor, steelworker, blues musician
and others recall their journey north on HWY. 61 from the poverty of
sharecropping to better-paying factory jobs in Chicago. Goin’ to
Chicago is a moving tribute to a generation of African Americans who
struggled over odds as great or greater than faced by another immigrant
group.
Homecoming
Homecoming is the first film to explore the rural roots of African American
life. It chronicles the generation-old struggle of African Americans
for land of their own which pitted them against both the Southern white
power structure and the federal agencies responsible for helping them.
Director Charlene Gilbert weaves this history together with a fond portrait
of her own Georgia farming family into what she calls, "A story
of land and love."
Like so much African American history, the Black farmers' story is one
of perseverance in the face of prejudice and perjured promises. As part
of radical Reconstruction, Congress allotted 45 million acres of land
to former slaves but his rapid reimposition of white supremacy meant
that little land was ever actually distributed. Despite formidable obstacles,
one million African Americans, mostly former sharecroppers, managed
to purchase over 15,000,000 acres of land by 1910.
This achievement was threatened by the agricultural crisis of the '20s
and '30s which led to a raft of farm foreclosures and, eventually, to
the system of federal farm loans and subsidies on which all farmers
depend today. But the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture was a white man's club,
often working hand in glove with local bankers and big landowners to
dispossess Black farmers of their land. For example, during the '30s
the Southern Tenant Farmers Union had to force the Farm Security Administration
to include African American farmers in their tenant purchase program.
It was through this program that the filmmaker's grandfather purchased
his land, the farm her cousin now owns. Black farmers are currently
suing the U.S.D.A. successfully for discriminatory loan practices over
the last three decades. As a result of these policies, there are only
18,000 Black farmers left in America and it is predicted there will
be none in the next century.
Homecoming is also mediation on the unfinished work of redeeming the
land African Americans worked as slaves for hundreds of years August
Wilson asserts that African Americans are a rural people who after the
Great Migration found themselves in an alien urban milieu. This film
argues that Black farms, though small in number today, can continue
to provide African Americans with a sense of cultural stability and
family unity in the 1990s. In a country which has never tried to make
African Americans feel at home, this film, like the farming families
it celebrates, offers a real "homecoming."
I’ll
Make Me a World
Bright Like a Sun 1935-1954 60 minutes
Bright Like A Sun continues the series’ story through the years
of the Great Depression and World War II. The challenging experiences
more African-American artists to adapt and expand their creative visions,
producing work with new energy and autonomy. Paul Robeson, the legendary
singer and stare of stage and screen, uses his artistry and fame to
fight for social justice in the US and abroad. Many others in this film
include Augusta Savage, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and other young
musicians.
I’ll
Make Me a World
Lift Every Voice 1900-1924 60 minutes
Lift Every Voice looks at the trials and triumphs of the first generation
of African Americans born into freedom. Bert Williams and George Walker,
who forged careers as vaudeville stars, struggle to transcend the stereotype
of the minstrel tradition as they reclaim genuine elements of black
culture and win a mainstream audience.
I’ll
Make Me a World
Not a Rhyme Time 60 minutes
Not a Rhyme Time begins in the 1960’s, a time of integration and
creative “crossover” when black artists make inroads in Hollywood,
on Broadway and in popular music, most notably via the Motown sound.
As Motown dominates the radio airwaves, a cultural revolution begins,
with artists challenging the aesthetics, power and ultimately the very
existence of a so-called “mainstream.” Some of the notable
names on this film are Romare Bearden, Gwendolyn Brooks and Alice Walker.
I’ll
Make Me a World
The Dream Keepers 1940-1965 60 minutes
The Dream Keepers looks at African-American artists in the turbulent
years after World War II, as growing demand for equal rights are met
with intense resistance. Lorraine Hansberry’s remarkable Broadway
debut, A Raisin in the Sun - extremely popular with both black and white
audiences - is one sign of the era’s pro-integration impulse. James
Baldwin chooses exile in Paris as he struggles to launch hit literary
career, but events in the United States eventually compel his return
to lend his presence and voice to the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement.
I’ll
Make Me a World
Without Fear or Shame 1920-1937 60 minutes
Without Fear or Shame takes viewers from the First World War through
the Jazz Age and into the years of the Great Depression. These are years
of massive migration from South to North, unprecedented white fascination
with “Negro’ entertainment and arts, and the day of a “New
Negro” in politics and culture, infused by the energies of such
leaders as W.E.B. Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph and Marcus Garvey. This
program highlights Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and the women
blues singers.
James
Baldwin: The Price of a Ticket
James Baldwin (1924-1987) was at once a major twentieth century American
author, a Civil Rights activist and, for two crucial decades, a prophetic
voice calling Americans, black and white, to confront their shared racial
tragedy. James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket captures on film the
passionate intellect and courageous writing of a man who was born black,
impoverished, gay and gifted.
James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket uses striking archival footage
to evoke the atmosphere of Baldwin's formative years - the Harlem of
the 30s, his father's fundamentalist church and the émigré
demimonde of postwar Paris. Newsreel clips from the '60's record Baldwin's
running commentary on the drama of the Civil Rights movement. The film
also explores his quiet retreats in Paris, the South of Franc, Istanbul
and Switzerland - places where Baldwin was able to write away from the
racial tensions of America.
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, and Blues for Mister Charlie, If Beale
Street Could Talk - to different stages in black-white dialogue and
conflict.
Towards the end of his life, as America turned its back on the challenge
of racial justice, Baldwin became frustrated but rarely bitter. He kept
writing and reaching in the strengthened belief that: "All men
are brothers - That's the bottom line."
La
Petite Vendeuse De Soleil (The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun)
Directed by Djibril Diop Mambety 45 minutes 1999
Wolof with English subtitles.
In this film, Mambety moves beyond merely documenting Africa's centuries
of victimization towards envisioning the continent's recovery. He uses
the simple tale of a crippled, yet resilient, little girl fighting for
her economic independence against an unjust marketplace as a metaphor
for Africa’s struggle to survive in an increasingly globalize economy.
Lumumba:
Death of a Prophet
Directed by Raoul Peck 70 minutes 1992
French with English Subtitles
Like Malcolm X, Patrice Lumumba (1925-61) is remembered less for his
lasting achievements than as a shining symbol of the struggle for self-determination.
This film is director Raoul Peck's moving meditation on the tragic events
of Lumumba's twelve-month rise and fall as Zaire's first and only popularly
elected Prime Minister.
Miles
of Smiles
Miles of Smiles chronicles the organizing of the first black trade union
- the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. This inspiring story of the
Pullman porters provides one of the few accounts of African American
working life between the Civil War and World War II.
Miles of Smiles describes the harsh discrimination which lay behind
the porters' smiling service. Narrator Rosina Tucker, a 100 year old
union organizer and porter's widow, describes how after a 12 year struggle
led by A Philip Randolph, the porters won the first contract ever negotiated
with black workers. Miles of Smiles recovers an important chapter in
the emergence of black America and reveals a key source of the Civil
Rights movement
Mortu
Nega (Those Whom Death Refused)
Produced/ Directed by Flora Gomes 1988 93 minutes
Portuguese Creole with English sub-titles.
This film covers the period from July 1972to the final victory later
that year and the consolidation of an independent Guinea-Bissau in 1974
and 1975. It dramatizes this history through the figure of Diminga,
a guerilla fighter, and her loyalty to Sako, her husband. Its portrayal
of the confusion and commitment of revolutionary warfare is one of the
most accurate yet eloquent on film.
Oh
Freedom After While
Directed by Steven J Ross and Narrated by Julian Band 56 minutes 1999
This video tells the story of more than 1,000 sharecroppers-mostly African
American but whites too-who were camped out in protest alongside two
state highways with their families and a few belongings in the winter
of 1939.
Other
Faces of AIDS
Hosted by ABC News Medical Correspondent George Strait. 60 minutes
Other Faces of AIDS takes a hard look at the rapid growth of AIDS in
minority communities. This program investigates AIDS in eight US cities,
such as New York, Atlanta, Chicago and Miami. It features interviews
with C. Everett Koop, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, and others that are
deeply involved in the educational and health efforts to combat the
illness.
Pieces
D’Identites
Producer/Director: Mweze Ngangura 1998, 93 minutes
In French with English Subtitles
Mweze Ngangura brings us a modern fairy tale set in the vibrant African
émigré demi-monde of today’s Europe. A naïve
kind, Mani Kongo, comes from Congo to Europe in search of his long-lost
daughter whom he sent there to study medicine. As soon as he gets to
Brussels, Europeans begin to victimize him until he is penniless, homeless
and forced to pawn his royal regalia. His daughter has been forced to
work as an ‘exotic dancer’ in a nightclub. Chako, the man
who saved Kongo and his daughter, return to establish a clinic in his
kingdom and to live happily ever after. Pieces D’Identites is able
to raise some of the most troubling issues of identity facing all Africans
in the ever-widening Diaspora.
Race
Against Prime Time
Race Against Prime Time is the only film to scrutinize how television
news represents African Americans. This hard-hitting documentary takes
us behind the scenes at the newsrooms of the three network affiliates
during the Liberty City uprising in Miami which left 18 dead. It provides
a classic case study of how the news gets made: what we see - and what
we don't.
Race Against Prime Time documents how local television newsmen anoint
black community spokespersons, characterize whites as victims and blacks
as rioters and fail to place the disturbances within the context of
and decades of civic neglect. This film reminds us that twenty-five
years after the Kerner report decried media prejudice, news reporting
remains very much a white view of black realities
Richard
Wright - Black Boy
Richard Wright - Black Boy is the first film on the life, work and legacy
of Richard Wright. Born outside Natchez, Mississippi in 1908, Wright
overcame a childhood of poverty and oppression to become one of America's
most influential writers. His first major works, Native Son and Black
Boy, were runaway best sellers which are still mainstays of high school
and college literature and composition classes. According to critic
Irving Howe, "The day Native Son appeared American culture was
changed forever."
Wright played an important role in many of the important social movements
of his time. The film follows his journey through the Chicago black
cultural Renaissance of the '30s, the Communist Party during the Depression,
the witch-hunts of the McCarthy era and the American expatriate community
in Paris in the '50s. This biography urges us to take a fresh look at
the often-neglected work of Wright's exile years including The Long
Dream and his championing of Pan Africanism and the newly emerging nations
of Africa and Asia.
By the time of his mysterious death in 1960 at age 52, Wright had left
an indelible mark on African American letters, indeed, on the American
imagination. This film biography demonstrates Wright's life-long belief
that "words can be weapons against injustice." It will encourage
students of American Literature, Black Studies and 20th Century American
History to revisit Wright's work with fresh enthusiasm and deepened
understanding.
Rostov-Luanda
Produced by Abderrahmane Sissako 1997 58 minutes
In Portuguese and French with English sub-titles
In Rostov-Luanda, Mauritanian director Sissako recounts his journey
to war-torn Angola in search of an old friend named Baribanga, but rediscovers
his hope for Africa. During his journey, he meets a young professional
woman, an orphan, a taxi driver, a mixed race businessman, a tailor,
a schoolteacher and a grandmother, who likes to dance. He discovers
that his friend is in the former East Germany but will be coming home
to Africa. Sissako has returned to a continent reconstructing itself
after catastrophes out of resilience.
Rouch
in Reverse
Directed by Manthia Diawara 1995 51 minutes
French and English with English subtitles
This is the first film to look at European anthropology from the perspective
of its subjects. Malian filmmaker and New York University professor,
Manthia Diawara’s film examines the anthropological enterprise
through the work of Jean Rouch, the most distinguished ethnographic
filmmaker living today. It includes clips from Rouch’s documentary
Les miters fous, his classic Chronique D ete, and his masterpiece, Moi,
un noir (Treichville).
San
Francisco State: On Strike
Ethnic studies courses are ubiquitous today, but it wasn't always the
case. In many ways, multicultural education can be traced back to San
Francisco in 1968-69. There, students at San Francisco State University
went on strike, shutting down the campus for six months, in one of the
most high profile student actions of the '60s. University president
S.I. Hayakawa called in the police who busted heads and arrested hundreds
in an attempt to restore control of the campus. But the strike finally
ended when the school acceded to the students demands and created the
first ethnic studies department at an American university. This film,
shot by the students and their allies, is a classic primary source document
of the Sixties.
Shattering
the Silences
Shattering the Silences: The Case for Minority Faculty offers everyone
in higher education an unprecedented opportunity to see American campuses
through the eyes of minority faculty.
Across America campus diversity is under attack; affirmative action
programs are banned, ethnic studies departments defunded, multicultural
scholarship impugned. Even so, faculty of color remains less than 92%
of all full professors and minority student enrollment is dropping for
the first time in 30 years.
Shattering the Silences cuts through the rhetoric of the current Culture
Wars by telling the stories of eight pioneering scholars - African American,
Latino, Native American and Asian American. As we watch them teach,
mentor and conduct research, we realize in concrete terms how a diverse
faculty enriches and expands traditional disciplines and contributes
to a more inclusive campus environment.
These eight professors also discuss the excessive workload and special
pressures minority faculty face everyday in majority white institutions.
For example, minority teachers are disproportionately tapped to provide
diversity on faculty committees and in scholarly organizations. They
often find themselves de facto advisors for all the students of their
ethnicity on campus. Their research and teaching is held to different
standards from that of their white colleagues. Dr. Darlene Clark Hine
looks back on the first wave of minority faculty as "a sacrificial
generation."
Faculty Featured in Shattering the Silences:
Miguel Algarin, Associate Professor of English, Rutgers University
Gloria Cuádraz, Assistant Professor of American Studies, Arizona
State University
Darlene Clark Hine, John A. Hannah Professor of History, Michigan State
University
Robin D.G. Kelley, Professor of History, New York University
Nell Painter, Edwards Professor of History, Princeton University
Alex Saragoza, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of
California, Berkeley
David Wilkins, Associate Professor of Political Science, University
of Arizona
Shawn Wong, Professor of English, University of Washington
Struggles
in Steel: The Fight for Equal Opportunity
Directed by Tony Buba 58 minutes 1996
This film documents the history of discrimination against black workers
and their struggle for equality on the job. It provides historical background
to current angry debates on race and affirmative action.
The
Language You Cry In: The Story of a Mende Song
Directed by Alvaro Topeka and Angel Serrano 52 minutes 1998
English and Mende with English Subtitles.
This film tells an amazing scholarly detective story reaching across
hundreds of years and thousands of miles from the 18th century Sierra
Leone to the Gullah people of present-day Georgia. It recounts the saga
of how African Americans retained links with their African past through
the horrors of the middle passage, slavery and segregation. The film
concludes with the homecoming of the Gullah family.
The
Strange Demise of Jim Crow
Directed by David Berman 56 minutes 1998.
This video reveals for the first time on film how many, perhaps most,
southern cities desegregated in a quieter, almost stealthy fashion marked
by behind-the-scenes-negotiations, secret deals and controversial news
blackouts. This video recaptures an important side of the integration
story we were never intended to see.
Through
A Glass, Lightly: A Documentary on Found-Object Art and Artists
Director: Jacky Comforty 20 minutes
Through a Glass, Lightly follows Mr. Imagination, David Philpot, and
Kevin Orth as they search the city for the raw materials of their art.
This documentary shows how they transform their found objects into color,
form, texture, craft and art.
Trouble
Behind
Trouble Behind shows how present and past are tied in a fearful knot
as it searches for the origins of today's racism in the past brutality
and present-day denial of a seemingly typical American town - Corbin,
Kentucky, home of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Like many industrial centers, Corbin attracted African American sharecroppers
looking for better paying jobs during World War I. But when white veterans
returned from the War, the found their close-knit community changed
and economic competition heated up. One October night in 1919, an armed
white mob rounded up 200 black railroad workers, locked them into box
cars, beat many of them, and then literally railroaded them out of town.
Interviews with eyewitnesses, scholars, newsreel clips and photos reconstruct
events in Corbin and place that night in the national context of a resurgent
Ku Klux Klan, the triumph of Jim Crow and 28 major race riots.
Trouble Behind evokes attitudes commonly found today in many all-white
towns and suburbs and how racism is passed down from generation to generation.
Most of all, it demonstrates that our refusal to confront the past cripples
our ability to build an inclusive future.
W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography in Four Voices
Producer/Director: Louis Massiah 1995 116 minutes
This is the first film biography of a man who towered over African American
history for nearly a century. W.E.B. Dubois’ (1868-1963) career
as a scholar-activist stretched form the end of Reconstruction to the
imposition of Jim Crow. In this film, four prominent African American
writers, Wesley Brown, Thulani Davis, Toni Cade Bambara and Amiri Baraka
each narrate the period of his life and describe his impact on their
work. They speak about DuBois’ role in the NAACP, the first Pan-African
Congress and many other great accomplishments of his life.
a | b | c | d | f | g | h | i | j | l | m | o | p | r | s | t | w