a608: Black Month '02/FILMS TO WATCH! (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: P D Bellegarde-Smith <pbs@csd.uwm.edu>

	As you know February is "Black Month." Most institutions and
Americans do their "serious" thinking about Black people in that 28-day
stretch, ignoring the next 11 months of the year.

	Two films you need to see, both on HBO.

	Saturday, February 9th, 2002	9:00 PM CST
	"MIDDLE PASSAGE"
		Th travel from Africa to the Americas. Done by Martinican
	filmmaker Guy Deslauriers. The film takes place exclusively on a
	slave ship. Joanne Weintraub writes in The Journal Sentinel
	2/3/02, "... the stench rises, the rats gather and men [sic] begin
	to die of diseases and infection. Each night as he hears the cries
	of African women and children being raped by the [white] sailors,
	the man wonders, 'What have we done to so enrage our ancestors.'"
	P.B.-S. note: it's about capitalism, not ancestral religion! Ms.
	Wintraub continues, " ...their faces looking stunned and impassive
	as they lie in their own waste or choke on their own vomit."

	Saturday, February 16th, 2002	9:00 PM [Check time!]
	"LUMUMBA"
		The life and death and times of the Congolese national
	hero and Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, by the Haitian filmmaker
	Raoul Peck. This film has taken the world by storm. It also
	addresses U.S. involvement in the assassination of Lumumba as it
	[the U.S.] has done with a number of other leaders around the
	world. A must see film!