Brooklyn 30 Lafayette Avenue Communications Department Academy Brooklyn NY 11217-1486 Elena Pa rk of Telephone: 718.636.4111 Melissa Cusick Music Fax: 718.857.2021 718.636.4122 [email protected]
News Release BAM Education & Humanities Launches Ground-Breaking New Film and Discussion Series for High School Students, Screening Prejudice: Images ofDiscrimination in 2dh Century American Film
Jonathan Demme, Molly Haskell, Margo Jefferson, Spike Lee, and Patricia Williams are part of remarkable roster of guest panelists
Featured American films span the twentieth century, including Intolerance, In the Heat of the Night, Watermelon Man, Do the Right Thing, and Philadelphia
BROOKLYN, October 16, 2000-BAM Education & Humanities this month launched its newest series, Screening Prejudice: Images ofDiscrimination in 20'" Century American Film, created to give New York City high school students a forum for discussion about this very important issue. This groundbreaking film and discussion program, representing every decade of the 20111 century, includes a series of remarkable films that reflect the history of prejudice and intolerance in American life. A discussion of the film ' s historical, sociological, psychological, and political context follows each screening. Jonathan Demme, Molly Haskell, Margo Jefferson, Spike Lee, and Patricia Williams are some of the prominent artists, scholars, journalists, politicians, and clergymen who will participate in the discussions. Additionally, four of the journalists who contributed articles for The New York Times highly-regarded series of reports, "How Race is Lived in America," will moderate several of the Screening Prejudice discussions. The ten-film series will take place in BAM Rose Cinemas, the four-screen, state-of-the-art film complex housed in the historic Brooklyn Academy of Music (30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn). A complete schedule, as well as commentator biographies, follows. Tickets are $5 per student and can be reserved for school groups by calling 718.636.4130 xl during business hours (tickets are only $4 when purchasing for more than one film). Leadership support for Screening Prejudice is provided by newspaper publisher James Ottaway, Jr. Corporate support is provided by The Chase Manhattan Foundation.
"Screening Prejudice provides a unique opportunity for young people to use the medium of film as a lens through which to view the uncomfortable issue of discrimination," said BAM Education & Humanities Director Jayme Koszyn, who conceived the Screening Prejudice series. "Additionally, we are thrilled to be able to provide such notable and respected guest panelists- some of whom, like Spike Lee, the students will be quite familiar with- to lead challenging and lively post-screening discussions." more ... Education & Humanities
200D lO ( t Screening Prejudice 2 Screening Prejudice schedule
October 5 at I 0:30am Intolerance (1916), 130 min. Directed by D.W. Griffith With Lillian Gish An American silent epic, Intolerance weaves four tales of discrimination and inhumanity, from the Babylonian era to the early 20111 century. Holding the stories together are the themes of intolerance, hypocrisy, bigotry, and persecution. The film masterfully moves from one story to the next, as the common theme unfolds in each, until reaching its stunning climax. *With commentator Patricia Williams Live piano score played by Donald Sosin
November 3 at I 0:30am Within Our Gates ( 1920), 79 min. Directed by Oscar Micheaux With Evelyn Peer The son of freed slaves, Oscar Micheaux was the first film director to break the boundaries of silence about black American life. Often interpreted as a reaction to D.W. Griffith's Birth ofa Nation, the film depicts the virulent racism of the day. Because of its courageous content, it was withdrawn from circulation almost immediately after its release. *With commentators Charles Musser, Pearl Cleage, and Gregory Javan Mills Live piano score played Donald Sosin
December 15 at 10:30am Imitation ofLife (1934), 124 min. Directed by John M. Stahl With Claudette Colbert, Fredi Washington, and Louise Beavers A white widow teams up with her black babysitter-whose own daughter rejects her so that she may pass as white-to create a successful business. Imitation ofLife will be preceded by The Kleptomaniac (1905), a short film portraying the very different treatments accorded a poor woman and a rich o11e after each is caught shoplifting. *With commentators Patricia Williams, Linda Earle, Margo Jefferson, and Diana R. Paulin
February 15 at 10:30am Gentleman's Agreement (1947), 118 min. Directed by Elia Kazan With Gregory Peck, John Garfield, and Celeste Holm On assignment as a journalist to write an article about Jewish life, Gregory Peck disguises himself as a Jew, only to discover rampant anti-Semitism in many areas of his life. Considered courageous in the late fOJiies for its treatment of controversial subject matter, the film won three Academy A wards. *With commentators Elizabeth Holtzman, Jonathan Rosen, and Rev. Dr. Paul Smith,· moderated by Tamar Lewin
March 9 at 10:30am Imitation ofLife (1959), 124 min. Directed by Douglas Sirk With Lana Turner, Mahalia Jackson, and Juanita Moore The remake of the 1934 version reinvents the central female character as a career-obsessed actress who hires a black babysitter. A comparison of the 1934 and 1959 versions will stir up issues about how America changed-or failed to change-in its views towards blacks and women during the intervening two decades. *With commentators Patricia Williams, Kim F. Hall, Linda Earle, and Diana R. Paulin,· moderated by Janny Scott
March 16 at I 0:30am The Searchers (1956), 119 min. Directed by John Ford With John Wayne and Natalie Wood John Wayne and his mixed-race companion tenaciously search for Wayne's niece after she is kidnapped by a local tribe. This Western classic, featuring remarkable cinematography, raises questions about the nature of heroes and heroism. *With commentators Molly Haskell, and Margo Jefferson
more ... Screening Prejudice 3 March 23 at 10:30am In the Heat ofthe Night (1967), 109 min. Directed by Norman Jewison With Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, and Lee Grant The winner of five Academy Awards, this fi lm tells the story of a racist Southern sheriff who must accept help from a black detective to solve a murder. Quincy Jones wrote the score for this controversial social thriller. *With commentators Manning Marable and Raymond Wolters
April 20 at 10:30am Watermelon Man (1970), 97 min. Rated R, grades 11-12 only Directed by Melvin Van Peebles With Godfrey Cambridge and Estelle Parsons Both a serious and comic treatment about a bigoted white man who suddenly becomes black, Watennelon Man was considered a turning point in satiric American films about race. *Conunentators TBD
May 18 at 10:30am Do the Right Thing (1989), 120 min. Rated R, grades 11-12 only Directed by Spike Lee With Spike Lee, Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Rosie Perez, and Ruby Dee Brooklyn native Spike Lee explores the hostilities that erupt between the owner of an Italian-American pizza shop and the members of the black community in Bedford Stuyvesant. *With commentators Spike Lee, Rev. Emma Jordan-Simpson, and Charles Hobson; moderated by Michael Winerip
June 8 at 10:30am Philadelphia (1993), 119 min. Rated R, grades 11-12 only Directed by Jonathan Demme With Denzel Washington, Tom Hanks, and Antonio Banderas Tom Hanks plays a young lawyer living with AIDS who files suit when his prestigious law firm fires him under false pretenses. Denzel Washington portrays the lawyer who overcomes his homophobic feelings to represent him. *With commentators Cathy Cohen, Jonathan Demme, and Ron Nyswaner,· moderated by Amy Harmon
About the commentators
Pearl Cleage is an Atlanta-based writer whose recent works include a novel, What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, which was an Oprah Book Club pick in 1998; the plays Flyin' West, Blues for an Alabama Sky, and Chain; and two books of essays, Mad at Miles and Deals with the Devil. Her second novel, I Wish I Had a Red Dress, will be published by Harper Collins in 200 I.
Cathy J. Cohen is a professor of political science and African American studies at Yale University, where she also serves as the co-director of the Center for the Study of Race, Inequality, and Politics. Cohen is the author of The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics and is co-editor (with Kathleen Jones and Joan Tronto) of Women Transforming Politics: An Alternative Reader. Most recently, she was awarded a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellowship.
Jonathan Demme is a producer and director. Hi s work as a director includes Melvin and Howard ( 1980), Stop Making Sense ( 1987), the psychological thriller The Silence ofth e Lambs ( 1991 )- for which he won an Academy A ward for Best Director, Philadelphia (1993), and Beloved ( 1998).
Linda Earle is the executive director for programs at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Prior to this, she served as director of the Individual Artists and Theatre Programs at the New York State Council on the Arts. Earle holds a master of fine arts in film from Columbia University and has taught film and women's studies at I Iunt er College, Barnard College, and Rutgers University.
more .. Screening Prejudice./ Kim F. Hall is associate professor of English and women's studies at Georgetown University. She is author of Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England. She also has published numerous essays on race, gender, and early modern culture, including "Beauty and the 'Beast' of Whiteness: Teaching Race and Gender." Her courses include "Cultural Representations of Women" and "Early Modern Women Writers." Beginning in January 2001, Hall will hold the Mullarkey Chair in Literature at Fordham University.
Amy Harmon writes about technology and culture for the New York Times. She previously was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, where she covered the automobile industry from the paper's Detroit bureau from 1991 through 1993. Harmon graduated from the University of Michigan in 1990 with a bachelor of arts degree in American culture.
Molly Haskell, author and critic, was a long-time staff writer for the Village Voice, New York magazine, and Vogue, and has written for many other publications including the New York Times Book Review, Mirabella, Esquire, The Nation, and the New York Review of Books. Her books include From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, Holding My Own in No Mans Land: Women and Men and Film and Feminists, and a memoir entitled Love and Other Infectious Diseases.
Charles Hobson currently is the executive producer at Africast.com, an Internet company specializing in bringing newscasts from Africa to the web. Hobson also is the president of Vanguard Documentaries. Winner of an Em my (ABC News) and other broadcast awards, he also received a Fulbright Award in 1996. Hobson was the writer/producer for the nation's first African American local public affairs program-Inside Bedford Stuyvesant.
Elizabeth Holtzman is an attorney with the New York City firm of Herrick, Feinstein. She began her career in public service when she won a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 1972. The youngest woman ever elected to Congress, Holtzman served on the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate hearings and also authored the Holtzman Amendment, which bars Nazi war criminals from the U.S. and authorizes their deportation. She recently was appointed by President Clinton to the Nazi War Crimes Working Group. Holtzman serves on BAM's board of trustees.
Margo Jefferson is a cultural critic for the New York Times. In 1995 she received a Pulitzer Prize for her criticism. She has been a staff writer for Newsweek and a contributing editor to Vogue and 7Days. Jefferson also has been a professor of journalism at New York University and a lecturer on literature and popular culture at Columbia University.
The Reverend Emma Jordan-Simpson is the founding executive director of Girls Inc. of New York City. Prior to coming to Girls Inc., Rev. Simpson was the executive vice president of the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation. She also serves as associate minister at the Concord Baptist Church of Christ and recently traveled to Greifswald, Germany to deliver a joint lecture with her husband at the Deitrich Bonhoeffer Lectures Senes entitled "The Churches Response to Global Poverty."
Spike Lee was born in Atlanta, Georgia and raised in Brooklyn. He attended Morehouse College and received a master of fine arts degree in film production from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Lee founded 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, based in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn. His films include Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, Crooklyn, Summer ofSam, and the HBO documentary 4 Little Girls.
Tamar Lewin has been writing for the New York Times since 1982, first covering law for the Business section as a national correspondent in 1986. Before joining the Times, she was the managing editor- and before that, Washington bureau chief-of the National Law Journal. Lewin also has worked at Common Cause in Washington, DC, at the Bergen Record in New Jersey, and as a mental patients' advocate during a brief legal career. She is a graduate of Barnard College and Columbia Law School.
Manning Marable is professor of history and political science and founding director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University. He also is the author of thirteen books, including Dispatches from the Ebony Tower, Let Nobody Turn Us Around, and Speaking Truth to Power: Essays on Race, Radicalism and Resistance, and is a lecturer and interpreter of the politics and history of race in America.
Gregory Javan Mills is the co-founder and chairman of the New York Black Film/Video Archives, Inc. and the executive director of the Harlem Media Center. He is the founder and CEO of the International Agency for Minority Artist Affairs, Inc. and the Harlem Empowerment Zone Arts Industry Council, Inc. Mills also has served as a panel member for the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York Council on the Humanities, and the nomination committee for the Rockefeller Foundation Leadership 2000.
Charles Musser is professor of American studies and film studie-s at Yale University. His books include The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907, Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin Porter and The Edison Manufacturing Company. He currently is co-curating a touring show entitled Oscar Micheaux and His Circle: African American Filmmaking and Race Cinema of the Silent Era. more .. Screening Prejudice 5
Ron Nyswaner wrote the screenplay for Philadelphia, for which he was nominated for Golden Globe, Writers Guild, BAFTA, and Academy Awards. He wrote the screenplays for Smithereens, Mrs. Soffel, Love Hurts, and Gross Anatomy (co-author), in addition to writing and directing The Prince ofPennsylvania. He was a co-producer of the independent film Star Maps, which premiered at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. Nyswaner also is a frequent advisor with the Sundance Institute, serving twice as its artistic director.
Diana R. Paulin is assistant professor in American Studies and English and has secondary appointments in African American Studies and Theater Studies at Yale University. She has published articles on racial representation, miscegenation, and performance in Theatre Journal, Cultural Critique, and the Journal of Drama Theory and Criticism, as well as a chapter in the Critical Anthology of African American Performance and Theater History.
Jonathan Rosen is the author of Eve's Apple, a novel published by Random House in 1997. A graduate of Yale College, Rosen's essays have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, Vanity Fair, and numerous other publications. His latest book, The Talmud and the Internet Living between Worlds, has just been published.
Janny Scott has been a reporter for the New York Times since 1994, during which time she has worked for the metropolitan news and cultural news departments. She also has written for the Week in Review section and the New York Times Book Review. Before coming to the Times, she was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, The Record of Hackensack, New Jersey, and the Real Paper in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has a BA from Harvard University.
Reverend Dr. Paul Smith is the senior minister at the First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn Heights, where he preaches to a multicultural congregation in a Presbyterian reform tradition that opens the door to new ideas and approaches within the church. Dr. Smith has brought sensitivity training to the local police precinct, introduced a lunch program for the homeless, and brought many famous leaders to the pulpit, including the Dalai Lama, Ambassador Andrew Young, and Arthur Ashe. Dr. Smith is a member of BAM's board oftrustees.
Patricia J. Williams is a professor of law at Columbia University. She is the author of several books and essays, including The Alchemy of Race and Rights, The Rooster's Egg, and Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race. In 2000, she received a MacArthur Foundation Grant for sustained excellence in her field. Williams was the keynote speaker at BAM's annual tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. in January 2000.
Mike Winerip is a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine and has worked at the paper for more than seventeen years on a variety of assignments. He is the author of9 Highland Road, which was named one of the ten best non-fiction works of 1994 by the American Library Association. His magazine article "Bedlam on the Streets" was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory journalism in 2000.
Raymond Wolters is the Thomas Muncy Keith Professor of History at the University of Delaware. His books include Right Turn: William Bradford Reynolds, The Reagan Administration, and Black Civil Rights, The Burden of Brown: Thirty Years of School Desegregation, The New Negro on Campus: Black College Rebellions of the 1920s, and Negroes and the Great Depression: The Problem of Economic Recovery. His writings have received awards from the American Bar Association and the Center for Judicial Studies.
About BAM Education & Humanities
In addition to its weekend series for families such as BAMfamily and BAMkids Film Festival, BAM Education & Humanities also designs programs for students addressing the need for arts education for young people. Led by Director Jayme Koszyn, the department has created two school-time performance series designed for different age groups: kaBA M is programmed for elementary students (grades 2-6), while Generation BAM is aimed towards high school students (grades 7-12).
Besides programming for young people, BAM Education & Humanities also oversees symposia, seminars, and dialogues that g1ve context for the Next Wave Festival and the Spring Season for adult audiences. The department also creates in-school arts programs for New York City public schools, which bring artists and teachers into the classroom. Additionally, the department is entering into the fifth year of its collaboration with the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation and the DanceAfrica Festival. For more information about any of these programs, call 718.636.4130.
more ... Screening Prejudice 6 General information
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, BAM Rose Cinemas, BAMcafe, and Shakespeare & Co. BAMshop are located in the main building at 30 Lafayette Avenue (Lafayette and Ashland) in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn. BAM Harvey Theater is located at 651 Fulton Street in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. BAM Rose Cinemas is Brooklyn's only movie house dedicated to first run independent and foreign film and repertory programming. Award-winning Tentation Catering provides food and beverages at BAMcafe, which features an eclectic mix of spoken word and live music on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights as well as Sounds of Praise (gospel music with a soul-food buffet) on selected Sunday afternoons. A package including dinner in BAMcafe and a movie ticket to BAM Rose Cinemas is available for only $30 (at the box office only).
Subway: 2, 3, 4, 5, D, Q to Atlantic Avenue B, M, N, R to Pacific Street; G to Fulton Street, C to Lafayette Avenue Train: Long Island Railroad to Flatbush A venue Car: Commercial parking lots are located adjacent to BAM.
Credits
Major support for Screening Prejudice is provided by James Ottaway, Jr. and The Chase Manhattan Foundation. Additional support has been provided by Assemblyman Roger Green and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. kaBAM and Generation BAM corporate sponsorship is provided by Con Edison, KeyS pan Foundation, The Dime Savings Bank of New York, FSB, Pfizer Inc., Citigroup, and Bear Stearns & Co. Inc. Leadership support is provided by the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Endowment Fund for Community, Educational, and Public Affairs Programs at BAM, the Edward John Noble Foundation, Inc., the William Randolph Hearst Endowment for Education and Humanities, May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, Inc., The Louis Calder Foundation, and the Independence Community Foundation.
BAM Education Supporters include Verizon Foundation, The Morgan Stanley Community and Educational Fund, Helena Rubinstein Foundation, Inc., Jean and Louis Dreyfus Foundation, Inc., The Axa Foundation, The Jeffry M. and Barbara Picower Foundation, Viacom Inc., BMG Entertainment, Simon & Schuster, New York Stock Exchange, Inc. , The Rita J. and Stanley H. Kaplan Foundation, Inc., AnneS. Richardson Charitable Trust, American Chai Trust, Brooklyn Delegation of the New York City Council, Brooklyn Borough President Howard Golden, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Senator Roy M. Goodman, and The MetroTech Downtown Fund.
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