Sunday 9 October 3pm
Tricycle Cinema Kilburn,
Tube: Kilburn
Tickets in advance or on door £9.00 from
http://www.tricycle.co.uk/current-programme-pages/cinema-program/cinema/the-great-debaters/
Second Ever UK Cinema Screening !! This film was never released in this country despite being produced by Oprah Winfrey and starring two Academy Award actors Denzel Washinton and Forest Whittaker. This is an educatonal and inspirational family film full of history and academic excellence for and by young black people
See video clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqAYR7CBriA
Plus Q and A with Neil Mayers author of Gifted at Primary, Failing at Secondary, on inspirational teaching and two 9 year old public speakers !
The Great Debaters is a period drama film directed by and starring two-time Academy Award winner Denzel Washington and produced by Oprah Winfrey . Based on a true story, the plot revolves around the efforts of debate coach Melvin B. Tolson (Washington) at historically black Wiley College to place his team on equal footing with whites in the American South during the 1930s, when Jim Crow laws were common and lynch mobs were a pervasive fear for blacks.
The movie also explores Texas during the Great Depression the day-to-day insults African Americans endured and the importance of education,. Also depicted is James L. Farmer, Jr. (Whitaker), who, at 14 years old, was on Wiley's debate team after completing high school (and who later went on to co-found C.O.R.E., the Congress of Racial Equality). Another character depicted on the team, Samantha Booke, is based on the real individual Henrietta Bell Wells, the only female member of the 1930 debate team from Wiley College who participated in the first collegiate interracial debate in the United States. Wells also happened to be a African American poet whose papers are housed at the Library of Congress.
This is a fantastic, educational and inspiring film presented by Images of Black Women and Black History Walks. www.imagesofblackwomen.com www.blackhistorywalks.co.uk
(On 29th October www.blackhistorywalks.co.uk will also be screening Spike Lees Miracle at Santa Anna at the BFI Southbank which came out in 2008 but was never released here...why ? )