[act-ma] 2/28: Ida B. Wells: A Passion For Justice (WED)

[Charlie Welch]

Ida B. Wells: A Passion For Justice
Free Screening


Wednesday, Feb 28
7pm


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. Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison reads
selections from Wells' memoirs and other writings in
this winner of more than 20 film festival awards.

"One had better die fighting against injustice than
die like a dog or a rat in a trap." - Ida B. Wells


53 min. 1989.


Radical Film Night at the Lucy Parsons Center
Every Wednesday night at 7pm
Always Free
lucyparsons.org


Upcoming Films


Mar 7: When the Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts
(2006)

Final two acts. The first half will be shown Feb 21.

As the world watched in horror, Hurricane Katrina hit
New Orleans on August 29, 2005. Like many who watched
the unfolding drama on television news, director Spike
Lee was shocked not only by the scale of the disaster,
but by the slow, inept and disorganized response of
the emergency and recovery effort. Lee was moved to
document this modern American tragedy, a morality play
witnessed by people all around the world. The result
is WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE: A REQUIEM IN FOUR ACTS. The
film is structured in four acts, each dealing with a
different aspect of the events that preceded and
followed Katrina's catastrophic passage through New
Orleans.


Mar 14: Repo Man (1984)

Frustrated punk rocker Otto quits his supermarket job
after slugging a co-worker, and is later dumped by his
girlfriend at a party. Wandering the streets in
frustration, he is recruited in the repossession of a
car by a repo agent. After discovering his parents
have donated his college fund to a televangelist, he
joins the repossession agency (Helping Hand Acceptance
Corporation) as an apprentice "repo man". During his
training, he is introduced into the mercenary and
paranoid world of the drivers, befriended by a UFO
conspiracy theorist, confronted by rival repo agents,
discovers some of his one-time friends have turned to
a life of crime, is lectured to about cosmic
unconsciousness by the repo agency grounds worker, and
finds himself entangled in a web of intrigue
concerning a huge repossession bounty on a 1964 Chevy
Malabu driven by a lunatic government scientist, with
Top Secret cargo in the trunk.


Mar 21: Oktyabr: Ten Days That Shook the World (1928)

In documentary style, events in Petrograd are
re-enacted from the end of the monarchy in February of
1917 to the end of the provisional government and the
decrees of peace and of land in November of that year.
Lenin returns in April. In July,
counter-revolutionaries put down a spontaneous revolt,
and Lenin's arrest is ordered. By late October, the
Bolsheviks are ready to strike: ten days will shake
the world. While the Mensheviks vacillate, an advance
guard infiltrates the palace. Anatov-Oveyenko leads
the attack and signs the proclamation dissolving the
provisional government.


Mar 28: Modern Times (1936)

Chaplins last 'silent' film, filled with sound
effects, was made when everyone else was making
talkies. Charlie turns against modern society, the
machine age, (The use of sound in films ?) and
progress. Firstly we see him frantically trying to
keep up with a production line, tightening bolts. He
is selected for an experiment with an automatic
feeding machine, but various mishaps leads his boss to
believe he has gone mad, and Charlie is sent to a
mental hospital... When he gets out, he is mistaken
for a communist while waving a red flag, sent to jail,
foils a jailbreak, and is let out again. We follow
Charlie through many more escapades before the film is
out.


Apr 4: Burnt By the Sun (1994)

Russia, 1936: revolutionary hero Colonel Kotov is
spending an idyllic summer in his dacha with his young
wife and six-year-old daughter Nadia and other
assorted family and friends. Things change
dramatically with the unheralded arrival of Cousin
Dmitri from Moscow, who charms the women and little
Nadia with his games and pianistic bravura. But Kotov
isn't fooled: this is the time of Stalin's repression,
with telephone calls in the middle of the night
spelling doom - and he knows that Dmitri isn't paying
a social call.




Questions-Comments about the film series, contact:
films(-at-)lucyparsons.org

Lucy Parsons Center
549 Columbus Avenue
Boston's South End
Telephone: 617.267.6272
Email: lucyparsons at tao.ca
Web: http://www.lucyparsons.org/