Black History Film Screening: Mountains That Take Wings

Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama : a conversation on life, struggles & liberation : a film / by C.A. Griffith & H.L.T. Quan.

SYNOPSIS:

Thirteen years, two radical activist all-stars-one conversation. Internationally renowned scholar, professor and writer Angela Davis and 89-year-old grassroots organizer and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Yuri Kochiyama spent over a decade conversing intimately about personal histories and influences that shaped them and their overlapping experiences.

MOUNTAINS THAT TAKE WING offers the gift of these two remarkable women’s lives, sharing the pair’s recorded exchanges in 1996 and 2008. The film’s unique format honors the scope and depth of their knowledge on topics ranging from Jim Crow laws and Japanese American internment camps, to Civil Rights, anti-war, women’s and gay liberation movements, to today’s campaigns for political prisoners and prison reform. Intercut with compelling period footage, Davis and Kochiyama’s cogent observations, keen analyses, and steadfast resolve to create a more equitable, humane world offer inspiring lessons in empowerment and community building for current and future generations.

PRESS:
“What is so striking about this film is its living history lessons, the breadth of singular and plural movements, the shared humanity and generations present in the room with subjects Yuri Kochiyama and Angela Y. Davis.”

San Francisco Bay View

“Illustrated with rare footage of extraordinary speeches and events from the late 1800’s to the 1960’s through today, the film explores the critical role women, youth and crosscultural, crossracial alliances played in…important social movements.”

The Adams Report

"…illuminates a subaltern history of courage and activism across racial/ethnic borders--an internationalist history that is an important (and forgotten) legacy of the civil rights, labor, feminist, and anti-imperialist struggles of the second half of the twentieth century. An invaluable film for students in Women’s and Gender Studies, Black Studies, Asian American Studies, Ethnic Studies, Sociology, History, and Political Science."

Chandra Talpade Mohanty Dept. of Women’s and Gender Studies, Syracuse University

"…offers a refreshing counterhistory of the twentieth-century U.S. freedom struggle, documenting conversations that the two women had over a twelve-year period."

"…offers a refreshing counterhistory of the twentieth-century U.S. freedom struggle, documenting conversations that the two women had over a twelve-year period."

Signs Journal of Women in Culture & Society 

SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS:
San Francisco Black Film Festival, Winner, St. Clair Bourne Award for Best Feature Documentary
Frameline - San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival
Harlem International Film Festival
COMMFEST (Global) Community Film Festival - Toronto, Canada - Winner, MADA Award (Make A Difference Award) for Best Feature Documentary
La Femme International Film Festival – Los Angeles, California
Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival & Lecture Series – Brooklyn, NY
Mid-Atlantic Black Film Festival - Norfolk, Virginia - Finalist, Best Feature Documentary
International Film Festival South Africa – Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa.
This Human World: International Human Rights Film Festival – Vienna, Austria
Pan African Film Festival - Los Angeles
Some Prefer Cake Lesbian Film Festival - Bologna, Italy - Winner, Audience Award for Best Feature Film
Nominated for a 2011 American Library Association Notable Video Award for Adults.

Trailer for Mountains That Take Wings:

https://youtu.be/9LkaJTalZXY

For more info call 203-946-7450

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