THE BLACK LIST PROJECT
Director: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders with Elvis Mitchell
Release Date: 2008
Genre: Documentary
Plot: The traditional definition of the phrase blacklist has been rendered obsolete by the documentary The Black List, which seeks to bury the negative weight of the term by allowing African-Americans to provide an up-to-the-minute answer to the grim origins of blacklist. In a film that works as series of living portraits, twenty prominent African Americans of various professions, disciplines and backgrounds offer their own stories and insights on the struggles, triumphs and joys of black life in this country and manage to re-define blacklist for a new century in the process. The film is presented as a series of vignettes a kind of living portraiture in which the subjects address the camera directly as they tell their stories.

The film was directed by the renowned portrait photographer and filmmaker, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, from a series of interviews conducted by Elvis Mitchell. Those interviewed for the film come from a vast and different collection of disciplines that draw from the worlds of the arts, sports, politics; the group assembled features luminaries such as Toni Morrison, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Vernon Jordan, Chris Rock, Richard D. Parsons, Zane and the Rev. Al Sharpton. Their tales of their lives begin with the personal, and move into an area of larger social repercussion, as the weight of their accomplishment on this country and world come into focus.
Sponsor: Tom McCall Photography / Cigarette Restitution Fund of Talbot County Health Department

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Screenings:
Saturday, September 20 • 12:30 pm • 90 min • Academy Art Museum
Sunday, September 21 • 3:30 pm • 90 min • Avalon Theatre