Museum of the Moving Image Dedicates Day to Film Depictions of Slavery this Weekend

It’s Black History Month, and the Museum of the Moving Image is looking at the “peculiar institution” of slavery as depicted in film and television. This Saturday, the venerable Astoria venue hosts a 7.5-hour symposium entitled “Massa’ Gaze: Screenings and Critical Discussions of the Depictions of Slavery in Film and Television.” At 1 pm, the event kicks off with a screening of Solomon Northup’s Odyssey, an adaptation of a memoir by a man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery. At 3:15 pm, Black Filmmaker Foundation President Warrington Hudlin moderates a panel discussion — “Which Story, What Story, and Whose Story is Being Told?” — with critics and historians opining on the recent depictions of slavery in such works as 12 Years a Slave and Django Unchained. At 5 pm, Hudlin, who is also a museum trustee, hosts “Who Gets to Tell the Story? Why and Why Not?,” during which prominent African-American filmmakers chat about their challenges in telling historically significant stories. Then at 6:30 pm, the museum screens Burn!, a film about a professional mercenary (Marlon Brando) who instigates a slave revolt on a Caribbean island in order to impro​​ve the British sugar trade. Years later he returns to deal with the same rebels because they have seized too much power, threatening British sugar interests.

Details: Massa’ Gaze: Screenings and Critical Discussions of the Depictions of Slavery in Film and Television, Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35th Avenue, Astoria, February 1^st, 1 pm to 8:30 pm, $15/$12 for students/$9 for museum members/free for Silver Screen members.

Photos: © Past America Inc., Courtesy of montereymedia