EVENT DETAILS

Black American Gothic

Independent filmmaker Carla Wilson documents the exodus of Black people from the inner-city, tracking folks from Chicago as they migrate west to small-town Iowa City, where they struggle to establish roots. Echoing the early 20th-century Great Migration of Blacks from southern states to the Northeast and Midwest, this new migration is also about family-friendly housing, jobs, and the search for a better life. So what does this national demographic trend look like on the ground? Iowa City is a self-identified peaceful community now facing new challenges: supposedly safe havens from urban life are increasingly attractive to the urban underclass, and as a consequence, these receiving communities are compelled to redefine themselves in terms of race, class, and the urban/ rural divide. By moving between narrated experience and social scientific data, local and the national scenes, history and immediacy, the documentary profiles a region in transition, providing public administrators, teachers, and citizens new narratives for self-understanding and action.

Awardee, "We the People" initiative, National Endowment for the Humanities

http://blackamericangothic.com/black_American_Gothic/Home.html

A Q&A will follow with filmmakers, Carla Wilson, Daniel Gross (UCI English) and Tony Rasmussen (UCI music grad.). Prof. Bridget Cooks (Associate Professor in Art History and African American Studies) will be the respondent and will talk a little about the film before it is shown.