$25/person
Doors Open for admissions 30 min. prior to screening Buy tickets at Film Center or online now
You are cordially invited to 1854’s Spring Gala at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center on April 19th at 6:30 pm.
You’ll be hearing more about this project in coming months, but for now here’s a brief introduction. When he died in 2015, the late Jack Schimmelman, a great fan of the spirituals and the Spirituals Choir, left behind 1854: A Folk Opera, a detailed concept about Vineyarders gathering to debate abolition at a hypothetical town meeting. The slave songs (spirituals) are an integral part of the piece.
Learn about the Griot – poet, storyteller and bridge between heaven and earth – and have your photograph taken with her on the red carpet!
Listen to the live music of Ce’sar Atzic Marquez while browsing the silent auction enjoying wine, sparkling water and small delicacies.
A one hour showing of the movie, Agent of Change, begins at 7:30, a timely and inspiring story of how successful protests for equality led to the inclusion of black history in the school systems.
Synopsis of AGENTS OF CHANGE : From the well-publicized events at San Francisco State in 1968 to the image of black students with guns emerging from the takeover of the student union at Cornell University in April, 1969, the struggle for a more relevant and meaningful education, including demands for black and ethnic studies programs, became a clarion call across the country in the late 1960’s. Through the stories of these young men and women who were at the forefront of these efforts, Agents of Change examines the untold story of the racial conditions on college campuses and in the country that led to these protests. The film’s characters were caught at the crossroads of the civil rights, black power, and anti-Vietnam war movements at a pivotal time in America’s history. Today, over 45 years later, many of the same demands are surfacing in campus protests across the country, revealing how much work remains to be done.
Agents of Change links the past to the present and the present to the past–making it not just a movie but a movement.
