In celebration of Black History Month 2015, you are invited to a screening of the film ‘Fruitvale Station’ (2013) on Wednesday 14 October 6pm, with a post-screening discussion with Hannah-Rose Murray, PhD student with the Department of American and Canadian Studies.
Written and directed by Ryan Coogler, the film depicts the last few days of Oscar Grant III’s life, an African American killed by police officer Johannes Mehserle in Oakland, California in January 2010. Aged just 22 years old, Grant was returning from a New Years Eve party with his girlfriend when he was stopped by police after an altercation on the subway. He was forced to the ground and fatally shot in the back by Mehserle.
Patrisse Cullors, the co-founder of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, identifies Oscar Grant’s death and the subsequent uprisings in 2009 as an important part of the “politicization” which led to African Americans challenging the murder of young men and women by white police officers across the US. The screening is an opportunity to see what Cullors has described as a “powerful” dramatization of the events of that fateful night in 2009.
The film won the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013, and went on to win the Best First Film Award at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.
Free, all welcome, please register: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/fruitvale-station-screening-tickets-18609115365
The University of Nottingham University Park Nottingham, NG7 2RD
email:C3R@nottingham.ac.uk