The 2024 AAAS Black History Month Film Series
Dive into the profound narratives of Black history with the Loyola AAAS Black History Month Film Series, featuring a powerful lineup of films that illuminate crucial moments and voices.
Dive into the profound narratives of Black history with the Loyola AAAS Black History Month Film Series, featuring a powerful lineup of films that illuminate crucial moments and voices.
Director: Annie Kaempfer
The Falconer is a story of second chances: for injured birds of prey, for an abandoned plot of land, for a group of teenagers who have dropped out of high school, and for Rodney Stotts. This documentary follows master falconer Rodney Stotts on his mission to build a bird sanctuary and provide access to nature for his community. The director weaves Rodney's mission with the story of his past, both of which are deeply rooted in issues of social and environmental injustice, and consistently orient the viewer to his worldview: nature heals.
A Q&A with Rodney Stotts and an educational bird of prey liaison from Rodney's Raptors will be held immediately after the film screening.
Director: Marchesi, J
The HBO documentary Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches brings to life the words of our country’s most famous anti-slavery activist. Drawing from five of Douglass’ legendary speeches, to represent a different moment in the tumultuous history of 19th century America as well as a different stage of Douglass’ long and celebrated life. Inspired by David Blight’s Pulitzer Prize winning biography, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom and executive produced by scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Black Art: In the Absence of Light), the film features narration of Douglass’ autobiographies by André Holland and context provided by Blight and Gates to remind us how Frederick Douglass’ words about racial injustice still resonate deeply today.
Director: Kates, N. Singer, B
During his 60-year career as an activist, organizer and "troublemaker," Bayard Rustin formulated many of the strategies that propelled the American civil rights movement. His passionate belief in Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence drew Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders to him in the 1940's and 50's; his practice of those beliefs drew the attention of the FBI and police. In 1963, Rustin brought his unique skills to the crowning glory of his civil rights career: his work organizing the March on Washington, the biggest protest America had ever seen. But his open homosexuality forced him to remain in the background, marking him again and again as a "brother outsider."
Director:Aaseng, J. Johnson, T. Arrindell, D.
Manifest Destiny Jesus documents how portraying Jesus as white reinforces police violence, bigotry, and institutional racism. The film uses history, interviews, and commentary to demonstrate the variety of ways racism manifests in our minds and around us. Against the background of a gentrifying neighborhood, the film weaves two main threads. After adopting two black boys, a white mother’s views on race and representation are turned inside out. After a sermon from a black female theologian, an interracial congregation reignites a plan to transform their stained glass image of Christ. Together with historical interviews, these community voices reveal a pattern of conquest and disenfranchisement that began in the colonial era and continues up through our modern period of rampant gentrification.