To commemorate the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade in the United States, White Students Confronting Racism hosted a 2-day film festival last Thursday and Friday.
The purpose of the film festival was to "remind people of this bicentennial and think about what it means for us today," said Ali Michael, student leader of WSCR, an organization of the Graduate School of Education.
Each day of the film festival featured a movie dealing with race, followed by a discussion of the issues presented.
The film on Thursday was Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, a documentary about descendants of a once-prominent slave-trading family who traveled to Africa and Cuba to explore the slave trade path, analyzing ways to deal with the present situation of race in America.
On Friday, WSCR invited representatives of The Minority Reporter, a Web site that examines the treatment of race in mainstream movies. According to them, most black movie characters fit into six recurring archetypes such as "comic relief" and "menace to society."
This presentation was followed by the film Meeting David Wilson, a documentary about an African American man who meets his namesake and descendant of his ancestors' slave master.
"[The film festival] is a good opportunity to have a shared experience in a film and talk to other people who want to talk about race in the United States," GSE student Kathleen Riley said. "I'm interested in expanding my perspectives and walking away feeling like I've learned something new."
The discussions that followed involved a small number of people talking about reactions to the films, thoughts on repairing the racial divide in America and ways to deal with the lasting impact of slavery.
"It was a productive discussion," said GSE student Craig Bruno. "The point was to get people talking about race. It's really a daunting subject for people to talk about."
WSCR "works to educate people about racism in our environment and racism in ourselves," according to Michael.
The film festival was co-sponsored by the Annenberg School for Communication and the Association of African American Graduate Students in Education.
