RACE IN NC - Looking Back • Moving Forward Documentary Film Forum
March 21-March 22 • The Historic Pittsboro Courthouse in downtown's traffic circle
A 100 Mile: Sustainable Cinema Series special event featuring panel discussion with filmmakers and African-American community leaders, post-screening Q&A’s with the producers and directors, gospel performances, local art and food vendors. Download RACE in NC flyer.
Passes/$15 ($18 at door) $5/per film. Passes on sale at ChathamArts Gallery, 115 Hillsboro St., Pittsboro (Wed-Fri); NC Arts Incubator, 223 Chatham Ave., Siler City http://ncartsincubator.org; McIntyre's Fine Books in Fearrington Village http://www.fearrington.com/village/mcintyres.asp and online.
SATURDAY MARCH 21
• 2:30 pm – Welcome/Opening Remarks
• Change Comes Knocking - The Story of the NC Fund • 3:00
pm (1 hr) by Rebecca Cerese and Dr. Steven Channing. From the Triangle
area producers of the PBS documentary February One comes the story of
The North Carolina Fund, a ground-breaking anti-poverty initiative launched
in 1963 by Governor Terry Sanford. Through interviews and archival materials,
this vibrant documentary traces the story of NC Fund: from its innovative
start as a public-private partnership, its daring use of integrated teams
of college students to assist and strengthen poor communities, to the
tension that developed between the traditional top-down approach to poverty
relief and the growth of grassroots political advocacy. Greeted with
hostility and opposition in its short, five-year existence, the NC Fund
was a transformative and influential program that left a legacy that
continues today. Post Q&A with Producer Rebecca Cerese. http://www.ncfundfilm.com:80
• FBI-KKK • 4:30 pm (82 minutes)
by Michael Frierson (associate professor in Broadcasting- Cinema at UNC
Greensboro.) FBI KKK is the story of the filmmaker's father, Dargan Frierson,
an FBI agent in Greensboro, NC during the 1960s, and the intersection
of his life with George Dorsett, the Imperial Kludd, or chaplain, of
the United Klans of America. With the sit-ins of the 1960s, his father
came to understand that his job in the FBI--enforcing Federal law--would
be a central force for racial justice. And he came to believe that he
could tailor his own style of counterintelligence--one that didn’t
use the illegal tactics J. Edgar Hoover was pushing --to maintain order.
Justice might be the ultimate goal, but the first order of business for
Dargan Frierson was to keep a lid on violence. Post Q&A with Director
Michael Frierson. http://fbi-kkk.com
• Panel Discussion: Looking Back, Moving Forward • 6:30 pm
• Family Name • 7:30
pm (90 minutes) by Macky Alston. As a young child growing up in North
Carolina, Macky Alston thought that it was unusual that many of his
African American elementary school classmates shared his last name.
For years, questions put to his family on the topic remained unanswered,
until his father, a civil rights leader and minister, gave Alston a
book about the history of their family. The book gave details about
the Alstons as one of the largest slave-owning families in antebellum
North Carolina. Winner of Sundance Film Festival's Independent Spirit
award, Alston's film chronicles the surprising twists and turns of
his search for the descendants of the slaves and slave owners who lived
on the plantations once owned by his family. (partially filmed in Pittsboro
and Chatham county) http://www.mackyalston.com
SUNDAY MARCH 22
• 1:00 pm: Special performance by Moncure's Liberty Chapel Reunion Choir at General Store Café. Come early and enjoy brunch too! 39 West Street, Pittsboro http://www.thegeneralstorecafe.com/home.html
• We
Shall Not Be Moved • 2:00
pm at the Pittsboro Courthouse (47 minutes). Chris Potter and Charles
Thompson (Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University) and Gary
Grant (Tillery, NC). We Shall Not Be Moved is their song, and it means
they “ain’t
going nowhere!” That’s
the spirit of the Tillery, North Carolina resettlement, product of a
New Deal program offering landless sharecroppers a chance to buy their
own farms. Roanoke Farms was one of only a handful of resettlement projects
for African Americans. Its families overcame the legacies of slavery
and Jim Crow to earn their part of the American Dream. They and their
successors continue to battle racism, assaults on their environment,
farm foreclosures, and natural disasters. Through archival film and video
footage, numerous historical photographs, and the vibrant narratives
of Tillery’s
elders, We Shall Not Be Moved shows how seeds of independence planted
in the pre-Civil Rights era took root in movements for racial justice
in the 1960s and grew into a strong force battling present-day environmental
racism and economic marginalization. Post Q&A with Gary Grant and
Chris Potter.
