Minister and civil rights activist Malcolm X, in his 1963 “Message to the Grass Roots” speech, spoke of “field negroes” and “house negroes” in the time of slavery; describing the people working in the field as the most downtrodden of the enslaved people.
Photographer and filmmaker Khalik Allah’s award-winning film explores the idea of modern-day "field negroes" by turning his camera upon the poorest residents of Harlem, people that most people try to avoid seeing. Khalik Allah presents these people with dignity and respect, and with unblinking attention to the brutal honesty of their circumstances.
In 2015, Field Niggas was a New York Times Critics Pick. It screened at AFI Fest, IFP Screen Forward in Brooklyn, Montreal International Documentary Festival, the True/False Film Festival, the Sarasota Film Festival (where it won the Terry Porter Visionary Award), FIDMarseille, France, and the SPLIT Film Festival in Croatia.
Field Niggas’s April 5 screening at George Mason University is the film's Virginia premiere. A discussion with the filmmaker, along with Wendi Manuel-Scott, director of Mason’s African and African American Studies program, and the Washington Post’s movie critic Ann Hornaday, will follow the screening.
Admission is free and is open to the public. The screening will take place in the Johnson Center Cinema, at 4:30 pm.
This presentation is sponsored by Mason’s African and African American Studies program, Film and Media Studies program, Film and Video Studies program, University Life, and the English department.