Film: Equiano & Nat Turner - Portraits zweier Protagonisten des Widerstands
Wie bieten zwei Filmportraits von Equiano und Nat Turner, zwei der Protagonisten des Afrikanischen Widerstands gegen den Sklavenhandel und die Sklaverei. Zunächst analysiert der Film “Equiano, A Son of Africa” anhand der wohl bekanntesten Autobiographie eines versklavten Afrikaners den sozialen und ökonomischen Kontext des Sklavenhandels im 18. Jahrhundert. “Nat Turner – A Troublesome Property” erzählt dagegen die Geschichte einer der erfolgreichsten Widerstandsbewegungen versklavter Afrikaner/innen in den USA. Beide Filme zeigen wir im Engl. OF. WdK, Saal, Eintritt frei.
Equiano, A Son of Africa
Direction: Alrick Riley, USA, 1996, 28 min, Engl. OenglF
Synopsis:
This BBC production employs dramatic reconstruction, archival material and interviews with scholars such as Stuart Hall and Ian Duffield to provide the social and economic context of the 18th century slave trade.
Equiano’s narrative begins in the West African village where he was kidnapped into slavery in 1756. He vividly recalls the pestilence and horror of the Middle Passage: “I now wished for the last friend, Death, to relieve me.” Eventually the young Equiano was shipped to a Virginia plantation where he witnessed slaves tortured with thumbscrews and the iron muzzle. Slavery, he would write, brutalizes everyone - the slaves, their overseers, plantation wives, the whole of society. Sold again to a British naval officer, he learned to read and write, became a skilled trader, and eventually managed to buy his freedom.
Equiano’s adventures eventually brought him to London where he married into English society and became a leading abolitionist. His expose of the infamous slaver Zong - 133 slaves thrown overboard in mid-ocean for the insurance money - shook the nation. But it was Equiano’s book that would prove his most lasting contribution to the abolitionist movement, a book which vividly demonstrated the humanity of Africans as much as the inhumanity of slavery.
Nat Turner – A Troublesome Property
Direction: Charles Burnett, USA, 2002, 58 min, Engl. OF
Synopsis:
In 1831, Nat Turner led a slave rebellion in Virginia that resulted in the murder of local slave owners and their families—as well Turner’s execution. At once an ambivalent cultural hero, a revolutionary figure and a subject of countless literary works, Turner has remained a “troublesome property” for those who have struggled to understand him and the meaning of his revolt, often resulting in controversy. As literary critic Henry Louis Gates explains: “There is no Nat Turner to recover… you have to create the man and his voice.”
The earliest source of information about Turner, The Confessions of Nat Turner, was not written by him at all, assembled instead out of a series of jail cell interviews by white Virginia lawyer Thomas R. Gray. The man portrayed in this first telling of the Nat Turner story clearly saw himself as a prophet, steeped in the traditions of apocalyptic Christianity. However, this “confession” raised the question of whether Turner was an inspired and brilliant religious leader in search of freedom for his people or a deluded lunatic leading slaves to their doom.
Veranstaltungsort und Adresse
Werkstatt der Kulturen, Wissmannstraße 32, 12049 Berlin
- So23.11.200820:30
23. November 2008
Film: Equiano & Nat Turner - Portraits zweier Protagonisten des Widerstands
Diese Veranstaltung in Berlin (Berlin) wurde von AfricAvenir veröffentlicht.
