Sept. 19th - 20th

Continuing Ed Presents: Back to School With The Prep School Negro

Back By Popular Demand!

The Prep School Negro

André Robert Lee, 2012, 71 min.

André Robert Lee and his sister grew up in the ghettos of Philadelphia. Their mother struggled to support them by putting strings in the waistbands of track pants and swimsuits in a local factory. When Andre was 14 years old, he received what his family believed to be a golden ticket – a full scholarship to attend one of the most prestigious prep schools in the country.  Elite education was Andre’s way up and out, but at what price?  Yes, the exorbitant tuition was covered, but this new world cost him and his family much more than anyone could have anticipated.

In The Prep School Negro, André takes a journey back in time to revisit the events of his adolescence while also spending time with current day prep school students of color and their classmates to see how much has really changed inside the ivory tower. What he discovers along the way is the poignant and unapologetic truth about who really pays the consequences for yesterday’s accelerated desegregation and today’s racial naiveté.

The screening on Friday, September 19th at 7:30pm will be followed by a Q&A with director André Robert Lee and writer Ayana Mathis.

The screening on Saturday, September 20th at 4:00pm will be followed by a Q&A with director André Robert Lee and scholar Paul M. Farber.

Ayana Mathis is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a recipient of the2014-15 New York Public Library's Cullman Center Fellowship. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, her first novel, a New York Times Bestseller and a 2013 New York Times Notable Book of the Year 2013, was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as the second selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0.

Paul M. Farber is a scholar of American and Urban Studies. He has a PhD in American Culture from the University of Michigan, and currently is a Postdoctoral Writing Fellow at Haverford College. He is the curator of the exhibition, The Wall in Our Heads: American Artists and the Berlin Wall for the Goethe-Institut Washington DC, opening in October 2014, and is co-curator of the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage-funded public history project, Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia,slated for Spring 2015. He also has contributed essays and helped produce several photography books including This Is the Day: The March on Washington (Getty Publications, 2013). @paul_farber

Continuing Ed is on-going series presenting films and speakers in order to advance discussion about the future of education and education reform.

Friday, October 3rd, 7:00pm

Voice of Liberation: Jalil Abdul Muntaqim

Eve Goldberg and Claude Marks, 2002, 20 min.

Jalil Abdul Muntaqim (formerly Anthony Bottom) was 19 years old when he was arrested. He is a former member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army, and is one of the longest held political prisoners in the world. This documentary is a unique opportunity to hear Jalil's story. While in San Quentin prison in California in 1976, Jalil launched the National Prisoners Campaign to Petition the United Nations to recognize the existence of political prisoners in the United States and in 1997 Jalil initiated the Jericho Movement. Over 6,000 supporters gathered in the Jericho '98 march in Washington DC and the Bay Area to demand amnesty for US political prisoners on the basis of international law. The Jericho Amnesty Movement aims to gain the recognition by the U.S. government and the United Nations that political prisoners exist in this country and that on the basis of international law, they should be granted amnesty because of the political nature of their cases.

In the Land of the Free

Vadim Jean, 2010, 84 min.

This 2010 documentary (narrated by Samuel L. Jackson) is about the Angola 3, three prisoners who while serving their time in Angola State Prison (the United States' most notorious penal colony) joined the BPP and participated in non-violent resistance campaigns protesting the terrible conditions, prisoner abuse and sexual slavery rampant inside the prison. As a result they were falsely accused of murder while in prison and have all been, with the exception of Robert King who was released in 2001, serving the last 38 years in solitary confinement.

Tribute to the late Herman Wallace, one of the Angola 3, with Herman's House filmmaker Angad Bhalla.

Saturday, October 4th, 4:00pm

Passion for Justice

Pat Saunders and Rea Taijiri, 1994, 57 min.

Yuri Kochiyama is a Japanese American woman who has lived in Harlem for more than 40 years with a long history of activism on a wide range of issues. Through extensive interviews with family and friends, archival footage, music and photographs, Passion for Justice chronicles this remarkable woman’s contribution to social change through some of the most significant events of the 20th century, including the Black Liberation movement, the struggle for Puerto Rican independence, and the Japanese American Redress movement. In an era of divided communities and racial conflict, Kochiyama offers an outstanding example of an equitable and compassionate multiculturalist vision.

Mountains That Take Wing: Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama

C.A. Griffith & H.L.T. Quan, 2009, 97 min.

Mountains That Take Wing features conversations that span 13 years between two formidable women whose lives and political work remain at the epicenter of the most important civil rights struggles in the US. Through the intimacy and depth of conversations, we learn about Davis, an internationally renowned scholar-activist and 88-year-old Kochiyama, a revered grassroots community activist and 2005 Nobel Peace Prize nominee's shared experiences as political prisoners and their profound passion for justice. On subjects ranging from the vital but largely erased role of women in social movements of the 20th century, community empowerment, to the prison industrial complex, war and the cultural arts, Davis' and Kochiyama's comments offer critical lessons for understanding our nation's most important social movements and tremendous hope for its youth and the future.

Post-screening Q&A TBA.  

7:00pm

Voices of Three Political Prisoners: Nuh Washington-Last Statement

The Freedom Archives, 2000, 20 min.

Albert “Nuh” Washington... a freedom loving, freedom fighter, Nuh joined the ancestors in prison on April 28, 2000, from cancer. Nuh fought a courageous battle with this disease. He was determined that the effects of the disease on his system would not compromise his integrity, self-respect or humanity. His life and death leaves a rich legacy to be learned from and cherished. In 1969, he joined the Denver, Colorado Chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP), working with the Free Breakfast Program. By 1971, Nuh was working out of the San Francisco Branch of the Party. Nuh (the Arabic form of Noah) was a committed member of the Black Panther Party and later, after the notorious FBI-engineered East coast-West Coast split, worked with the Black Liberation Army (BLA), in defending the lives and dignity of black folk. Back in the 1970s, Nuh was shot and captured with another Panther, Jalil Muntaqim, and was later charged and convicted of murder along with Jalil and Herman Bell. Evidence has since surfaced strongly suggesting the three men were unjustly convicted in this case. For over 28 years Nuh (was) held in California and New York gulags, and repeatedly punished for his political ideas. When Nuh was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he was devastated. He never envisioned dying behind the walls. He always believed he could win his freedom. While accepting the diagnosis, he still fought until the end, but he sought to put his house in order, so to speak. His final days were spent doing this to the best of his ability.

Free Angela and All Political Prisoners

Shola Lynch, 2013, 102 min.

A documentary that chronicles the life of young college professor Angela Davis, and how her social activism implicates her in a botched kidnapping attempt that ends with a shootout, four dead, and her name on the FBI's 10 most wanted list.

Closing Reception and Party.