produces an educational film.screening entitled: PopcornNLemonade.Films monthly with each printing of the newspaper four times a semester on campus at The University of Houston, University Park. All film screenings are free to students, staff, and community. If you have a suggestion or film to be reviewed for the Spring semester2008 email your name and contact information to: songhainews@gmail.com
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Film Schedule:
Spring 2008
Our next film will be screened on March 25, 2008 in the Honors College housed inside the M.D. Anderson Library @ The University of Houston from 6:30pm-8:30pm Discussion to follow after screening. Refreshments will be served. Seating is Limited. Get There on time.
Film Synopsis
Brick by Brick: A Civil Rights Story is a one-hour television documentary about a contemporary American battle for civil rights. It follows three families in Yonkers, New York, in the middle of a confrontation about the politics and law of racial discrimination in housing and schools that challenges and changes their hometown.
Brick by Brick describes how a ghetto was created through public policies. The film initially paints a picture of isolation for many people of color in the city, most of whom are living in segregated neighborhoods served by failing schools. The primary storytellers are local people from different backgrounds, who relate their personal encounters with housing and educational discrimination, as well as others who experience very different opportunities across town.
In education, the film details how local public school divisions grew up around a neighborhood overwhelmed with 7,000 units of public housing, further entrenching the city’s color line. Along with the harsh reality of this situation, viewers see the community react to the conditions in their children’s schools, fighting back to force Yonkers to change its ways.
Brick by Brick tracks the resulting federal US v Yonkers litigation, which challenged neighborhood and educational discrimination. Coming back out of the courtroom into the community, the story describes the bitter local confrontation about race and the very concept of community that follows. From a first person perspective, characters weave a tale of years of work attempting to achieve justice, with a labyrinth of successes and setbacks that the struggle entails.
At its close, Brick by Brick shows what has happened both to a community and to individual citizens, committed to their city. It also illustrates the difference housing opportunity can make in a single family’s life. The story brings the fiery legal and political crucible of a contemporary city and its larger implications for our nation today onto the screen. Visit the website at: http://www.brick-by-brick.com
Sponsors for this film screening:
Campus Progress, Songhai News, the UH-Honors College, the UH-Women’s Resource Center, and SWAMP Media
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Past Film Screenings
Feburary 2008
Race to Execution:
A film by Rachel Lyons, discusses the death penalty in depth in the United States of America. www.racetoexecution.com
September 2007,
NEGROES WITH GUNS: Rob Williams and Black Power tells the dramatic story of the often-forgotten civil rights leader who urged African Americans to arm themselves against violent racists. In doing so, Williams not only challenged the Klan-dominated establishment of his hometown of Monroe, North Carolina, he alienated the mainstream Civil Rights Movement, which advocated peaceful resistance.
For Williams and other African Americans who had witnessed countless acts of brutality against their communities, armed self-defense was a practical matter of survival, particularly in the violent, racist heart of the Deep South. As the leader of the Monroe chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Williams led protests against the illegal segregation of Monroe’s public swimming pool. He also drew international attention to the harsh realities of life in the Jim Crow South. All the while, Williams and other protestors met the constant threat of violence and death with their guns close at hand.
October 2007
Tupac Shakur: Thug Angel
Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Peter Spirer (Rhyme & Reason, East Coast Mix, Volume 1: Another Reason to Rhyme, BloodTies) directs this look at the life and art of rap artist Tupac Shakur. In addition to rare footage of Shakur, the film includes interviews with significant members of the rap world like Suge Knight and Snoop Dogg. In the $3 billion dollar industry of hip-hop music, no one has touched as many lives with a microphone as Tupac Shakur. In this never-before-seen footage, see Tupac at seventeen,a young man at the edge of his destiny.
Speaking out about injustice on the streets of Oakland. See him at the brink of his stardom Marin City. Kickin’ freestyles. See him at theishooting range, at home andiat theihighs andilows of his career.
Thug Angel explores Tupac, the soldier, whose work was deeply formed byihis Black Panther heritage. Tupac, the artist and entertainer, perhaps the most prolific writer in hip-hopito ever pick up a pen. The literary. The ambassador. The thug. And the statistic, who was killed before he realized his true potential. He has become theifirst black mythical icon… Directed by Academy Award® nominee Peter Spirer (Rhyme And Reason) and Produced by Tupac’s close friends. See Tupac as the people closest to him knew him. See him as Thug Angel.
Review Source:http://www.streetgangs.com/movies/thugangel.html
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November 2007
Waters Rising
Before Hurricane Katrina, life in the New Orleans projects was nothing to brag about. Filled with drugs and violence, the streets of the Desire Projects were congested with people living in tightly packed shacks.
To an outsider, completely unlivable, but for two brothers, Killer and Gangsta, they own the streets and hustle for a living. Desire is their home, it’s everything they know, and getting out is usually a short lived dream.
Set five days before the fatal hurricane hits, directors Greg Carter and Shawn McEiveen take us inside the lives of one family’s emotional turmoil before their lives change forever in “Waters Rising.” Katrina took over 1,800 lives, but how many were saved and altered for the better?
Recently released from prison, Gangsta has just served time for a car theft committed by his young brother Killer. As Gangsta vows to leave behind his criminal lifestyle and run away with his girlfriend, Killer brings him back for just one more job. What should be a simple heist turns into a suspenseful disaster that is thrown off course as lives are taken.
“Waters Rising” is an amazing look at the disaster that was Katrina and lives that defined New Orleans. Literally, Katrina destroyed and ravished everything in its path, but on the other end of the spectrum, the hurricane took away everything that was killing and depriving the lives of the poor in New Orleans. Sad, but true.
Gangsta and Killer come from a broken home – crack-addicted mother, father lost to violence, and younger siblings growing up too fast. Unfortunately, they symbolize most of New Orleans youth. “Waters Rising” is an incredible story of one family’s drive to stick together for a better tomorrow and fight the brewing storm.
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