Thursday 30th October
A PLACE OF RAGE
(Pratibha Parmar, UK ,1991, 52 mins)

This exuberant celebration of African American women and their achievements features interviews with Angela Davis, June Jordan and Alice Walker. Within the context of the Civil Rights, Black Power and Feminist movements, the trio reassess how women such as Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer revolutionised American society. Angela Davis, at one time the FBI's most wanted woman, recounts her involvement with the Black Panthers and the US Communist Party. Her rarely seen 1970 prison interview, civil rights footage and archival photos are interwoven with June Jordan's powerful poetry, linking issues of homophobia, racism, U.S. imperialism and liberation struggles world-wide. The insights of acclaimed writer Alice Walker (The Color Purple) and filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha enrich this engrossing portrait of African American feminism.
Followed by a discussion with the director, Pratibha Parmar

AT THE RIVER I STAND
(D.Appleby, A.Graham, S.Ross, USA 1993, 53 mins)

'HOW MANY RIVERS DO WE HAVE TO CROSS, BEFORE WE GET TO MEET THE BOSS'
Bob Marley

Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I have been to the mountaintop" speech was delivered on 3 April 1968 in Memphis, the day before he was assassinated. "At The River I Stand" reminds us that, although King went to Memphis as part of his Poor People's Campaign, he also went there because 1,300 sanitation workers had been on strike for higher wages and recognition of their union branch.
The sanitation workers remained steadfast in their determination to prove, as their most famous picket sign indicated, that they were 'men'. Their signs read "I Am A Man", and they were often photographed by the national media with the tanks of the National Guard rolling menacingly down the Memphis streets behind their picket lines.
The film is a persuasive and moving argument for the position that the Memphis sanitation strike was the culmination of the civil rights struggle in the Southern States.
At The River I Stand should be shown in every school and every workplace.

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