Community Cinema Series at Clark Tackles Civil Rights

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Jeffrey Starr, GoLocalWorcester Contributor

Clark University will be holding its second film showing as part of the Community Cinema series this Thursday, February 28, at 218 Jefferson Hall at 950 Main Street in Worcester. This month's film is "The Powerbroker: Whitney Young's Fight for Civil Rights." The event is free and open to the public. The showing will begin at 7pm.

The screening will be followed up with a panel discussion featuring Rev. Jose Encarnacion, Co-Minister Christian Community Church and Executive Director of the Shalom Center, Gloria Hall, Historian and Joyce McNickles Ed.D., Educator and Consultant with McNickles and Associates. There will be time for a community dialogue in order to engage with the film’s modern implications.

The film is produced by Young's niece and award-winning journalist Bonnie Boswell, her son Taylor Hamilton, and Christine Khalafian. As executive director of the National Urban League, Young was one of the few African Americans who had the ears of those in power during the height of the Civil Rights movement. Through these relationships he gained better access to employment, education, housing, and healthcare for the black community and others in need. Though he is less known today than other leaders of the era, Young’s influence is still felt profoundly.

The documentary is both a personal portrait of Young and a historical chronicle of how he applied the mission of the Urban League to help realize the goals of the Civil Rights movement. The film features rare archival footage and exclusive interviews with an array of people who worked with Young or who have been shaped by his work, including the late Dorothy Height, Pulitzer Prize winner Manning Marable, Howard Zinn, Julian Bond, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Young’s biographer Dennis C. Dickerson, Donald Rumsfeld, Ramsey Clark, and others.

Now in its 15th year of existence, ITVS' flagship community outreach program Community Cinema offers free monthly showings of films from the Emmy-award winning PBS series Independent Lens in over 95 cities across America. ITVS brings together important local organizations, members of the community, and public television stations to discuss and learn about the most important social issues of our time. The showings are followed by panel discussions.

"Through Community Engagement Campaigns in support of groundbreaking, independent films, our innovative educational product ITVS Community Classroom and our flagship community outreach program Community Cinema, ITVS Community works to bring communities together and connect them with information, resources and opportunities for education, engagement and positive change," says the ITVS Community organization of their mission.

This mission is perfectly aligned with that of N-CITE, a Media Collective that works with urban youth to create alternative media spaces to combat the dominant narratives presented in the mainstream media, according to Eric DeMeulenaere of N-Cite.

"We work to provoke critical dialogue about issues affecting the lives of individuals living in our urban neighborhoods in Worcester. The films in our film series address issues related to race, health, sexism, environmental justice and more. We use these films to launch community dialogues about how these larger national/global issues are being confronted, thought about and addressed right here in Worcester," he says.

The Community Cinema program will be showing four more films at Clark, one each month until June. The next film in the series, Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines, will be aired on March 28th.

Read more about the series here. For more information, visit N-CITE's website, Community Cinema or find them on Facebook.