Filmmaker Samuel D. Pollard speaks during the 'Slavery By Another Name' panel during the PBS portion of the 2012 Winter TCA Tour held at The Langham Huntington Hotel and Spa on Jan. 4, 2012 in Pasadena, Calif.
*Following a screening of the 90-minute documentary “Slavery by Another Name” at the Sundance Film Festival on Monday, the audience gave a nearly 2-minute standing ovation for its director Sam Pollard.
As previously reported, the film makes its PBS debut on Feb. 13 at 9 p.m., as part of the channel’s Black History Month programming.
RELATED: Eric Holder’s Wife Tells Her Story in PBS’ ‘Slavery by Another Name’
Based on the book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Douglas A. Blackmon, the documentary chronicles the decades after the Emancipation Proclamation when blacks were pulled back into forced labor under a system in which men, often guilty of no crime at all, were arrested, compelled to work without pay and repeatedly bought and sold. Tolerated by both the North and South, forced labor lasted well into the 20th century.
“Every film I’ve done that deals with African American history, it’s important because it’s American history,” Pollard told EURweb exclusively at the Television Critics Association press tour earlier this month. “The more I can do a film that looks at this history and we can get it out to the public, the more they can understand and stop being so narrow-minded to think that American history is only one way. To see how broad it is, how complicated it is – to me, it’s an invaluable service.”
Pollard, whose directing credits include “Eyes on the Prize” and several “American Masters” documentaries for PBS, chose Laurence Fishburne to narrate “Slavery by Another Name,” and uses actors to recreate some of the heartbreaking stories from the book.
Sundance audiences are embracing the work (with one woman so overcome with emotion during a post-screening Q&A with Pollard that she was unable to speak). But will the subject matter be enough to draw viewers when it premieres next month on PBS?
Below, Pollard reveals his own personal game plan to address potential apathy – and it involves taking the film on the road.
Slavery By Another Name director Sam Pollard on getting people to watch by CherieNic
“Slavery by Another Name” premieres on PBS Monday, Feb. 13, 2012 at 9pm ET / 8pm CT (check local listings). Watch the trailer below.
Damn….is all I can say.
I will buy the book on which the documentary is based and watch it next month on PBS.
WAKE UP EVERBYBODY! Anyone see the movie “Honeydripper” where the guy is walking down the road and is picked up by the sheriff and charged with vagrancy only to be sold to labor on a farm? Don’t say this can’t happen today because it is happening in cities across the U.S. where Blacks are disproportionately sentenced to prison when other alternatives are available. The prison industrial complex is a billion dollar industry that needs new contributors to sustain the $$$ that is being made off the ‘prisoners’.
Also check out
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness – Michelle Alexander.
The thirteenth amendent that ended chattel slavery (owning a person as personal property) and the slave trade, established another form of slavery for convicted felons. To be ratified or approved, it needed to be accepted by 3/4 of the states in existance in 1865.
The 13th amendment, which formally abolished slavery in the United States, passed the Senate on April 8, 1864, and the House on January 31, 1865.
AMENDMENT XIII
Section 1.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Passed by Congress January 31, 1865. Ratified December 6, 1865.
Soooo because it’s an amendment to the constitution it is ok to enslave people through the penal system?
I put the transcript of the 13th amendment out there because people of African descent in America refuse to acknowledge that 99% of the racism towards them is from laws like these. Average Black families don’t raise their children to know the actual laws that are out there affecting their lives everyday.
The only progress that Blacks in this country have gained in almost 150 years since the end of slavery, is that we can’t be discriminated against on interstate public ground transportation or local public ground transportation. This happened because all those people who fought to get rid of the discriminating laws permanently.
The fact is, if you are convicted of a crime and sent to prison in any state that ratified the 13th amendment, or any of America’s 9 territories (American Samoa, Guam, Midway Islands, US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Republic of Palau, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, Federated States of Micronesia) you can be sold as a slave TODAY in 2012!
If prohibition in the 18th amendment (no manufacture, sale or distribution of liquor) could be reversed in the 21st amendment, than you know these laws can be changed. But someone has to change the law, not just push people’s emotional buttons.
Thanks for clarifying why you posted the transcript of the 13th amendment. I agree, laws are not etched in stone thus they can be removed or amended.