|
|
Screening History is a new feature of the annual meeting making its debut in Memphis. It recognizes the growing importance of film as a medium for connecting with students in the classroom, and promotes history as an exciting area of study. In addition to the OAH Erik Barnouw Award winner for the best documentary film concerned with American history, Screening History will showcase seven additional recent cinematic representations of the American past.
Erik Barnouw Award Winning Film
The winner(s) of the Barnouw prize for 2003 will be announced and screened at the annual meeting. First given in 1983, the award honors Columbia University's Erik Barnouw, a historian of mass media. The prize is given annually in recognition of outstanding programming on network or cable television, or in documentary film concerned with American history, the study of American history, and/or the promotion of history.
Murder at Harvard
Murder at Harvard uses an infamous 1849 homicide case to raise provocative questions about historical inquiry. In retelling this historical whodunit, noted scholar Simon Schama sprightly guides viewers through an intricate maze of fact and fiction to artfully reconstruct the past and arrive at the real and "imagined" truth. Schama's historical journey wrestles with questions of truth and accuracy and confronts the problem of how historians can fully engage and recreate past events that may be shrouded in mystery. Both thought-provoking and highly entertaining. A rare preview, Murder at Harvard airs on PBS in July 2003 as part of the American Experience series.
Benjamin Franklin
A fresh and revealing portrait of one of the most prominent and endearing figures of the revolutionary period, Benjamin Franklin follows the life and career of the autodidact and self-made businessman who epitomized the tact, ingenuity, and grit that launched a new nation and helped to shape the world. The award winning series includes a distinguished cast that gives dramatic life to Franklin and vividly recreates the world of revolutionary America.
War Letters
A powerful examination of "the human side of combat," from the American Revolution to the Gulf War, this evocative film uses the correspondence of the men and women who experienced conflict to tell an exceptionally poignant story. Relying on letters collected as part of the Legacy Project and recently uncovered home movies, War Letters has no narrators and no stars. A film that beautifully conveys the realities and the impact of war with unusual depth of feeling.
Intolerable Burden
In 1967, in an incredible act of courage, Mae Bertha and Matthew Carter challenged the efforts of the Drew, Mississippi, School District to subvert the desegregation of local schools. In the face of threats, harassment, and intimidation, the Carters and seven of their children persisted in their determination to end separate and unequal education facilities in their small municipality, a fight they eventually won in a successful court battle. Constance Curry, who chronicled the Carter's resolute fight in her well-received book, Silver Rights, revisits this story of valor and indomitable will in an equally affecting film.
Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey
Narrated by Sidney Poitier, this critically acclaimed film explores the life and legacy of Ralph Johnson Bunche, the first person of color to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Lesser known today than many of his contemporaries, Bunche was a towering figure in the fields of international diplomacy and civil rights–a man dedicated to human rights on both the world stage and the homefront. This moving biography examines the complex relationship between international and national events through the life of an accomplished teacher, public servant, and diplomat who had an unfailing dedication to world peace, democracy, and racial equality.
The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow
Legal segregation stained the American landscape and scarred the lives and psyches of generations of Americans. Liberty's antithesis, it gave lie to the democratic ideals of freedom and equality. This monumental film recounts the base origins of Jim Crow and tells the sweeping story of the men and women, black and white, who battled to vanquish the pernicious tangle of laws and customs and to assure that injustice would become a relic of a shameful past. An enlightening and inspiring film.
Fatal Flood
The massive 1927 Mississippi River flood ravaged more than 27,000 square miles, from Cairo, Illinois, to New Orleans, Louisiana, leaving in its wake as many as a thousand fatalities and nearly one million homeless. Fatal Flood examines the devastating physical and social toll wrought by one of the nation's worst natural disasters on the Mississippi Delta town of Greenville. An arresting story of race, power, and transformation examined through the town's grievous rendering of reconstruction and relief, and the complex relationship of the wealthy planter and his son who spearheaded recovery efforts.
Gwen Moore is education coordinator at the Organization of American Historians.
|