Rider Hosts Reception at Newark Black Film Festival in Trenton

Rider University, along with the NJ Amistad Commission and the NJ Commission on National & Community Service, will host a reception and film screening on Thursday, July 30, as part of the Newark Black Film Festival in Trenton. The event is free and open to the public.

The event, Birth of a Myth and a Nearly Forgotten Response, will feature the segments of the Birth of a Nation, as well as screening of the film Within Our Gates. Following the films, Donald Bogle, film historian and author, will lead a discussion with the audience.

This classic 1915 silent film, Birth of a Nation, directed by D.W. Griffith was an innovative cinematic breakthrough for its time. However, this controversial Civil War epic damaged American race relations for many decades, through its vicious caricaturing of African-American citizens, and its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan’s terrorism.

Within Our Gates is considered a response to The Birth of a Nation, with a story focusing on an African American woman who travels north to help a minister raise funds in support of a school of impoverished black children. The 1920 film by the pioneering black film maker and entrepreneur Oscar Micheaux is an early depiction of race and race relations in America during the formative years of Jim Crow and racial terrorism.

The reception will begin at 5 p.m. at the New Jersey State Museum Auditorium, 205 West State Street, Trenton, NJ. The screening and discussion will follow at 6 p.m.

The 35th annual Newark Black Film Festival, produced by The Newark Museum and supported by a Bank of America grant, in Trenton will run from Thursday, June 25, through Thursday, July 30. Please visit www.njstatemuseum.org for the complete schedule.