Civil Rights Documentary Cinema and the 1960s: Transatlantic Conversations on History, Race and Rights
The British Academy, London
24-26 May 2016
This conference – held in memory of American social activist, politician and leader in the civil rights movement Julian Bond (1940-2015) – brings together documentary filmmakers, activists, and film, history and media scholars. Its focus is films based in civil rights history and inspired by it. It will promote a trans-Atlantic exchange of ideas around film production, activist subjects, and historical research in the making of civil rights cinema, civil rights history and cultural memory. It examines race and rights – activism, massive resistance, film and visual cultures – to intervene creatively in the history of the 1960s and in the historiography of the civil rights movement.
The convenors are:
Prof. Sharon Monteith, Co-Director of the Centre for Research in race and Rights, University of Nottingham; Dr George Lewis, University of Leicester; Prof Nahem Yousaf, Nottingham Trent University; Dr Helen Laville, University of Birmingham
Speakers and filmmakers include:
John Akomfrah OBE, Smoking Dogs Films
Dr Reece Auguiste, University of Colorado, US
Eduardo Montes-Bradley, writer and director with Heritage Films Project at the University of Virginia, US
Professor Clayborne Carson, Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, US
Professor Jon Else, documentary filmmaker and Professor of Journalism, UC Berkley, US
Professor Peter Ling, University of Nottingham, UK
Professor Allison Graham, documentary filmmaker and historian, University of Memphis, US
Matthew Graves, University of Mississippi, US
Ms Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, Freedom Rider and former member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
David Shulman, documentary filmmaker, US and UK
Professor Stephen Tuck, University of Oxford, UK
Professor Clive Webb, University of Sussex, UK
Films screened will include selections from the ground-breaking 14-hour documentary series Eyes on the Prize (1987) and full screenings of At the River I Stand, (1993), Rebels: James Meredith and the Integration of Ole Miss (2012), The March (2013), An Ordinary Hero: The True Story of Joan Trumpauer Mulholland (2013), Ballots and Bullets in Mississippi (aka Dirt and Deeds in Mississippi, 2015)
To view the programme and to register for the conference please visit the British Academy event page here.
In conjunction with the conference, there is will also be a free evening screening of Julian Bond: Reflections from the Frontlines of the Civil Rights Movement and a conversation with its director Eduardo Montes-Bradley on Tuesday 24th May. Please register for this separately at the British Academy event page here.
This conference is co-sponsored by the Centre for Research in Race and Rights, the University of Nottingham, Nottingham Trent University, the University of Leicester and the University of Birmingham.