The New Black: FAMS Visiting Filmmakers Series at George Mason University 11/7 JCC 4:30pm
Thursday, November 7, 2013 4:30 PM EST
Johnson Center, Cinema
The New Black tells the story of how the African-American community is grappling with the gay rights issue in light of the recent gay marriage movement and the fight over civil rights. The film documents activists, families and clergy on both sides of the campaign to legalize gay marriage and examines homophobia in the black community’s institutional pillar—the black church and reveals the Christian right wing’s strategy of exploiting this phenomenon in order to pursue an anti-gay political agenda. The documentary takes viewers into the pews and onto the streets and provides a seat at the kitchen table during the historic fight to win marriage equality in Maryland and charts the evolution of this divisive issue within the black community.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Yoruba Richen. Her award-winning film, Promised Land, has screened at numerous festivals around the world. In 2007, she won a Fulbright Award in filmmaking and traveled to Salvador, Brazil, where she began production on Sisters of the Good Death, a documentary about the oldest African women’s association in the Americas and the annual festival they hold celebrating the end of slavery.
In 2012, Yoruba won the Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Award and became a Guggenheim fellow. She is a graduate of Brown University and teaches Documentary film at CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism.
This event is free and open to the public.
The New Black and Yoruba Richen at George Mason University is sponsored by the Film & Media Studies Program, and cosponsored by African & African American Studies, Cultural Studies, English, Film & Video Studies, the Honors College, the LGBTQ Resources Program, Sociology & Anthropology, University Life, and Women & Gender Studies.
Hosted by GMU FAMS Visiting Filmmakers Series Director, GMU FAMS cfuchs@gmu.edu | gmufams@gmai.com | 703-993-2768 .
