Haile Gerima’s rarely seen 1979 documentary focuses on the story of 10 civil rights activists wrongfully convicted of arson in 1971. The activists, who came to be known as the Wilmington 10, spent nearly a decade in prison even as extensive evidence against the state of North Carolina’s case was brought to light by lawyers and journalists. Gerima uses interviews with the Wilmington 10’s families, and with Black Panther Party member Assata Shakur, to call out the injustices these political prisoners face, connecting their plight to others behind bars and to the legacies of systemic racism that put them there. 1979, US, 4K digital restoration courtesy the Academy Film Archive, 120 min.
The Friday, March 10, screening will be introduced by guest speakers E.G. Bailey and Craig Laurence Rice.
Accessibility
Assistive-listening devices are available at the box office. Please contact us at least two weeks in advance for ASL interpretation, audio description, and CART captioning to allow time to schedule these services.
For more information or to request additional accommodations, call 612-375-7564 or email access@walkerart.org.
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Bio
Haile Gerima (Ethiopia, b. 1946) is a director, writer, editor, and actor who has lived and worked in the United States since 1967. Gerima first studied theater in Chicago and then transferred to UCLA for the Master’s program in film. He is a leading member of the L.A. Rebellion film movement, also known as the Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers. After completing his thesis film Bush Mama (1975), Gerima received international acclaim with Harvest: 3000 Years (1976), an Ethiopian drama that won the Grand Prize at the Locarno film festival. He made two documentaries, Wilmington 10 – USA 10,000 (1978) and After Winter: Sterling Brown (1985), before filming his formally ambitious tale of a plantation slave revolt, Sankofa, in 1993. Gerima’s Teza (2008) won the Jury and Best Screenplay awards at the Venice Film Festival.
Gerima is a professor emeritus and founding faculty member of the Howard University Graduate Film Program, where he taught for decades after leaving Los Angeles. Together with his wife, Shirikiana, and sister Selome, Gerima created a distribution company for his films and those of other Black filmmakers and opened a Washington, DC, bookstore specializing in books and films about the African diaspora.
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