Free Film Screenings
2021 SSSP Virtual Annual Meeting
Wednesday, August 4
7:30pm–10:30pm (Eastern Time)
There will be a free film screening of three dynamic films followed by a Q&A discussion at this year’s virtual annual meeting. We hope your schedule permits you to attend.
A Reckoning in Boston
A Reckoning in Boston is a new documentary film by James Rutenbeck about racial and economic inequalities in cities. Kafi Dixon is a Boston bus driver and urban farmer who seeks equity for low-income women of color who have experienced trauma and disenfranchisement. Carl Chandler, a community elder wants to tell his family's story to the wider world. They gather with twenty other adults living along the poverty line at a community center in Boston to study art, history, philosophy and literature in a rigorous yearlong tuition-free night course. Kafi reads dialogues about the city in Plato's Republic, yet faces rejection in her own hometown, a prosperous metropolis swept up by the allure of development and gentrification. Carl, a disabled senior citizen who raised two daughters as a single father, cares for his grandson and reads voraciously. James Rutenbeck, a white filmmaker from the suburbs, has come here to document their lives. Over five years he witnesses evictions, chaos and calm persistence. He wants to remain a witness and allow Carl and Kafi to tell their own stories, but over time comes to understand the film cannot be fully realized until he speaks up too.
The film A Reckoning in Boston will be presented with Director, James Rutenbeck, attending to do a Q and A afterwards. For more information, visit: https://www.areckoninginboston.com/.
Conscience Point
Exposing a painful, quintessentially American geography, Conscience Point unearths a deep clash of values between the Shinnecock Indian Nation and their elite Hamptons neighbors, who have made sacred land their playground.
Beneath the mystique of The Hamptons, among one of the wealthiest zip codes in the U.S., lies the history of the area's original inhabitants. The Shinnecock Indian Nation were edged off their land over the course of hundreds of years, pushed onto an impoverished reservation, and condemned to watch their sacred burial grounds plowed to make way for mega-mansions and marquee attractions like the exclusive Shinnecock Hills Golf Club--five-time host of the U.S. Open.
Conscience Point tracks this fractured history alongside the path of one woman determined to make a stand: Shinnecock activist Rebecca “Becky” Hill-Genia who, together with other tribal members and allies, has waged a relentless, years-long battle to protect the land and her tribe’s cultural heritage from the ravages of development and displacement. Now both the Shinnecock Nation and town residents face a new challenge; the onslaught of elite newcomers who threaten the very place they intend to cherish.
The film Conscience Point will be presented with the Director, Treva Wurmfeld, attending to do a Q and A afterwards. For more information, visit: https://www.consciencepointfilm.com.
Rebel Bells
The film follows a group of young girls of color and their older mentors and mothers organizing and participating in spreading environmental awareness and protesting to stop environmental devastation.
“If Black Panthers and Girl Scouts had a baby, it would be the Rebel Bells.” - Pilar Rodriguez
Rebel Bells is a documentary short film about an all-girls radical collective located in the Calumet region connecting southeast side Chicago, Illinois and East Chicago in northwest Indiana. The Calumet region is an economically precarious, environmentally-polluted industrial corridor in the U.S. Midwest. The Rebel Bells was started in 2016 by three mothers who are leaders in the environmental justice movement in their respective communities. The goal of the Rebel Bells collective is to teach young girls about social justice and community activism in an empowered and safe environment. Though they receive guidance from the moms that are involved in the group, the girls take ownership over the curriculum and typically lead the meetings and activities of the group.
The film Rebel Bells will be presented with Director, Michelle Yates, attending to do a Q and A afterwards. For more information, visit: https://facultyworksshowcase.blogspot.com/p/michelle-yates.html.
