Preface from The BlackFilm Project

A salaam Aleichem!

Good evening, friends of ZIFF, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters.

First, I want to congratulate the ZIFF Board, staff, supporters, and movie goers on this 10^th anniversary!

I am proud to be a ZIFF Ambassador!

I also want to thank several people who made it possible for me to participate in ZIFF 2005, ZIFF 2006, and ZIFF 2007; Ali Moussa-Iye, Martin Mhando, and Jacob Barua.

Words of context are necessary before announcing our jury’s award.

General Introduction

The slave trade represents one of the most tragic and dehumanising events in human history. This tragedy, which East Africans describe as Maafa, is a catastrophe of immense proportions. It is a crime against humanity that wreaked havoc on Africa and dispersed its people across a wide geographic area encompassing the great oceans and the continents of our planet. In order to bring this tragedy to the conscience of humanity, UNESCO launched the Slave Route Project in 1994. This ‘Breaking The Chains’ Prize embodies the spirit of the Slave Route Project. The prize awards $10,000 to the makers of a recent film on slavery; a film that breaks the silence and speaks to the social, historical, economic, and psychological impact of the slave trade; a film that raises public awareness of slavery’s historical and contemporary manifestations; a film that gives voice to the dispossessed, reflects their perspectives and articulates their resistance to this dehumanisation.

Film and cinematic-based media represent a powerful means of education, socialisation, information and entertainment in the contemporary world. The ‘Breaking The Chains’ Prize is the first international initiative to recognise audio-visual and media professionals whose work addresses the topic of slavery in honest and creative ways. The award seeks to encourage this work and contribute to the process of healing by sensitising and informing audiences, invoking the cultural memory and voice of dispersed communities, and revealing the full scope of this human tragedy by exploring repressed aspects of slavery in Europe and the Americas as well as in regions that have received little attention, such as the Arab world, Asia and Andean America.

Analysis

The works in competition come from the Middle East, North America, South America, Europe and the Caribbean. They include feature films, personal narratives, Public Television narratives and documentaries, as well as independent films. But they all have a common theme: they represent the work of filmmakers who dare to speak of the unspeakable and say the unsayable; whether it is a personal narrative that excavates African ancestry in places of historical denial or a film that functions to break down the institutional barriers of national public television and commercial film companies.

Tribute to the Pioneers

Although the ‘Breaking The Chains’ Prize is the first international award to recognise filmmakers whose work explores enslavement and resistance, this is not the first time that filmmakers have addressed this subject. It is important to pay tribute to those women and men who kept the flame burning --pioneers such as Med Hondo, Sembene Ousmane, Mohammed ‘Johnson’ Traore, Sarah Maladoror, Tomas Gutierrez-Alea, Yousef Chahine, Alex Haley, Gordon Parks, Dr. Ayoub Mohammed, Haile Gerima, Sergio Giral, and Euzhan Palcy.

Special Mention

In the tradition of these visionaries who used the camera to remind the world of the forgotten tragedy, we want to make special mention of two films in competition that dare to break the silence in countries where discussion of the slave trade might be taboo. Baa Baa Black Girl (Turkey) uncovers the enslavement of Africans in the Ottoman Empire and Film Class (Israel) reveals the story of the unspoken history of Afro-Bedouin women in Israel.

It is also important to continue to support such Public Television works as Bitter Tropics (France) and Slavery and the Making of America (USA).

Recommendations

Several of the films were produced for public and private television in North America and Europe. We want to see more financing, distribution and exhibition of these films, which are making a lasting contribution to the process of national and international healing as well as foregrounding the economic and cultural interests of African diasporic peoples. Certainly, African and Caribbean film and audio-visual institutions also have an obligation to contribute to this historic process. Institutional broadcasters and film companies in Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East have an obligation to their popular audiences and a responsibility to foster cultural diversity and promote economic democracy and justice for all their citizens. All of us share in that obligation. We recommend the following:

ZIFF should institutionalise a festival section and prize dealing with the slave trade and forms of enslavement.

FESPACO should formally address the theme of slavery and institute a programmatic focus that recognises the importance of this issue to the pan-African world.

UNESCO should support the continued documentation and compilation of a collection of films that have contributed to the cinematic representation of slavery and make them available for distribution and viewing by communities, schools, and libraries who may wish to present educational programmes on slavery, but who do not have the resources to do so on their own.

Filmmakers and organisations of filmmakers should create films, web-sites and networks to help the public to better understand the tragic consequences of slavery.

Unions, schools, universities and research institutes should organise seminars and workshops for their constituents.

Corporations, foundations and national authorities should provide support and help create infrastructure to assist artists in their mission to document and create a progressive, liberating and humanising iconography.

Society must position slavery and anti-slavery work as an important item at the personal, community, national and international levels.

The Award

Members of the jury unanimously find that the independent film 500 Years Later, directed by Owen Alik Shehadad, represents excellence in fulfilling the criteria of the ‘Breaking the Chains’ Prize. 500 Years Later not only reviews the historical record, it goes on to construct an important narrative of healing and cultural memory using rich, poetic imagery. This film integrates archival material, cogent interviews and powerful cinematography to examine slavery and its impact through historical time and across geographical boundaries. Importantly, 500 Years Later chronicles the resistance of the historically dispossessed and empowers them to tell their own stories from the African diasporic perspective. It is an engaged film that addresses the ethical and moral dimensions of the system of slavery. The jury wishes to award the ‘Breaking the Chains’ Prize to 500 Years Later. Congratulations. Thanks to Ziff and its organisers, the British Council, and to UNESCO.

UNESCO Jury

Abdulkadir A. Said – Member (South Africa)

Ali Saleh – Member (Zanzibar)

Dr. Gladstone Yearwood – Member (Barbados)

Dr. Ali Moussa Iye – Member (Djibouti)

Dr. Harold Weaver – President (USA)