2011 Productions

2011 Production Season

Promised Land
by Yoruba Richen
Produced by: National Black Programming Consortia, American Documentary/POV, and Diverse Voices Project (funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting)



Promised Land invites viewers to take an inside look at the critical story of land reform and racial reconciliation in the new South Africa. The film explores how the country is rebuilding itself after years of living under the racist, violent system of apartheid. Beginning in 1913, Blacks in South Africa were forbidden from owning land. They were forcefully removed from their land and re-settled into so called 'homelands' which were located in the most undesirable areas in the country. Over the course of ninety years, an estimated 6 million blacks were disposed of their land.

Promised Land follows the story of the Mekgareng, an impoverished tribe removed from their land 40 years ago. In 1998, they petitioned the new democratically elected government to reclaim the land, which is now highly valuable and currently owned by white farmers and developers. And they are fighting the Mekgarang to keep possession of the land. Promised Land also follows the story of the first white farm expropriation in the country.

In 2006, the South African government ignited a firestorm when for the first time in the country's history, it forced a white farmer to sell his farm in order to give it back to the descendants of the black owners who were removed from it in the 1940's. Through these two stories, viewers will see why, as many inside South Africa call it, the land issue is a "ticking time bomb" that has potential to explode and destroy the fragile racial compact that post-apartheid South Africa was built upon.

Ms. Yoruba Richen joined us for the post-screening discussion!

Date: Saturday, January 29, 2011 @ 2PM
Venue: Casa Frela Gallery, 47 W. 119th Street (Between Lenox and 5th Avenues - 2/3 Train to W.116th)
Free Admission - Suggested Donation: $10
Light Refreshments Will Be Served

The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords
by Stanley Nelson

The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords is the first film to chronicle the history of the Black press, including its central role in the construction of modern African American identity. It recounts the largely forgotten stories of generations of Black journalists who risked life and livelihood so African Americans could represent themselves in their own words and images. The Black Press takes viewers "behind the veil" of segregation to recover a distinctly Black perspective on key events from antebellum America to the Civil Rights Movement. It offers an intimate social history of African American life during these turbulent years - the achievements trumpeted, defeats pondered, celebrities admired, even the products advertised.

Mr. Stanley Nelson joined us for the post-screening discussion!

Date: Saturday, February 19, 2011 @ 2PM
Venue: Casa Frela Gallery, 47 W. 119th Street, NYC (Between Lenox and 5th Avenues - 2/3 Train to W.116th)
Free Admission - Suggested Donation: $10
Light Refreshments Will Be Served

Zora Neale Hurston: Jump At the Sun
by Kristy Andersen

Zora Neale Hurston, path-breaking novelist, pioneering anthropologist and one of the first black women to enter the American literary canon (Their Eyes Were Watching God), established the African American vernacular as one of the most vital, inventive voices in American literature. This definitive film biography, eighteen years in the making, portrays Zora in all her complexity: gifted, flamboyant, and controversial but always fiercely original.  Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun intersperses insights from leading scholars and rare footage of the rural South (some of it shot by Zora herself) with re-enactments of a revealing 1943 radio interview. Hurston biographer, Cheryl Wall, traces Zora's unique artistic vision back to her childhood in Eatonville, Florida, the first all-black incorporated town in the U.S. There Zora was surrounded by proud, self-sufficient, self-governing black people, deeply immersed in African American folk traditions. Her father, a Baptist preacher, carpenter and three times mayor, reminded Zora every Sunday morning that ordinary black people could be powerful poets. Her mother encouraged her to "jump at de' sun," never to let being black and a woman stand in the way of her dreams.

Date: Saturday, March 26, 2011, Doors open at 6 PM. Film starts at 6:30 PM.
Venue: Casa Frela Gallery, 47 W. 119th Street, NYC (Between Lenox and 5th Avenues - 2/3 Train to W.116th)
Free Admission - Suggested Donation: $10
Light Refreshments Will Be Served