Black History Month at the VIFF Center
February 1 to 28
The VIFF Center’s Black History Month lineup for 2023 includes two series: icons Y Dispatches.
The icons highlight the achievements of American movie stars such as Denzel Washington, Viola Davis, Samuel L Jackson, Angela Bassett, and Chadwick Boseman, among others. Look for Spike Lee’s screenings malcolm x; by norman jewison In the heat of the night, starring Sidney Poitier; by Quentin Tarantino django unchained; Purple Rain, Black Pantherand other titles.
Dispatches focuses on documentaries, ideas, and social justice, including work by and about James Baldwin (including M from 1970).Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris) and Camille Billops. Two recent notable Canadian films are also screened: Dear Jackie, a cinematic letter to Jackie Robinson, the first African-American player in Major League Baseball and a civil rights activist; Y Our Revolution Dancewhich tells the story of how disenfranchised non-white gays and lesbians in Toronto in the 1980s forged a community, organized and demanded recognition and equality.
Black History Month at VIFF kicks off with week-long engagements from two of the most acclaimed films of the past year. by Alice Diop Saint Omer, from France (February 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12 and 16) is a response to the 2013 news of a 15-month-old girl found drowned on a beach and the French mother of Senegalese origin accused in his death. After a series of documentaries, this is the first dramatic work for the filmmaker, who won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival last year.
margaret brown descendant (February 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 9), one of the top five documentaries of 2022, according to the National Board of Review, focuses on the people of Africaville, Alabama, and in particular the descendants of the 110 slaves brought aboard the Clotilda in 1860. This was the last known slave ship to transport kidnapped Africans to America as human cargo, an illegal shipment made as a gamble by a local landowner, Timothy Meaher, who burned and sunk the ship to destroy the evidence.
