A double feature to celebrate the legacies of enslaved African-Americans in observance of Juneteenth,
The program will feature the award-winning short film, Another Slave Narrative (38 min, 2017), and Mary (20 min, 2022), both directed by Hudson Valley resident, Michelle Renee Jackson, MDiv. A Q&A with the director will follow.
Another Slave Narrative (ASN) is a short film that relays the original transcripts of the Workers Progress Administration’s (WPA) 1936-1938 interviews of formerly enslaved African-Americans by the Federal Writers’ Project, and it is the first film to use a multiracial cast to do so. It continues to transform how viewers worldwide understand the history of slavery in the US while enabling thoughtful dialogue about slavery and the African-American experience. The film received the Audience Award of the African-American Women in Cinema Film Festival (New York) and educators nationwide use it to help students better understand the diverse experiences of enslaved people. It remains an influential tool in fostering honest, nonpolitical, multiracial dialogue about our shared American history of slavery.
In Mary, a taciturn Custodian looks on as a Ballet Mistress and her company dancers rehearse while they each speak the words transcribed from Mary Armstrong’s 1936 federal WPA interview about her experience as an enslaved woman who also loved to dance.
1hr + Q&A / NR
Michelle Renee Jackson is an award-winning writer, director, and photographer. Her journey as an artist began during her graduate program at Harvard Divinity School where she studied the intersections of religion, race, gender, and sexuality. On the weekends, she moonlit as a slam poet. While serving as the Tanenbaum Interreligious Fellow at Vassar College, Michelle completed her first screenwriting course, taught by Jim Steerman.
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