C3R research associate Patrick Henderson screens acclaimed experimental film that makes connections between one of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speeches and the cult movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.
As part of the Centre for Research in Race and Rights' contribution to Black History Month 2015 at the University of Nottingham, and in collaboration with Nottingham Contemporary, C3R research associate and PhD student in the Department of American and Canadian Studies hosted a well-attended screening of Edgar Arceneaux's A Time to Break Silence on Saturday, 24 October 2015. This experimental film, which had only been screened once before in the UK, tells the story of the evolution of technology and the use of the bible as weapon of both light and dark, connecting spirituality, technology, military and social change.
As Patrick noted in his introduction to the screening, the epic project, developed in collaboration with Detroit-based techno-pioneers Underground Resistance, draws on the seminal speech 'Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence' of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. from which it takes its name. Despite the generally conservative attitudes expressed by prominent leaders such as King throughout the Civil Rights era, this particular speech from April 4, 1967 saw the pastor on the offensive against a government he had been wary to not contradict too sparsely throughout his career. The release of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Oddyssey just two days after King's death on April 4, 1968 may seem entirely unrelated on the surface, but, as Patrick explained, the film's troublesome HAL 9000 wreaking havoc within a futuristic space station functions like a forewarning of the dangers of rapidly advancing technology, for instance the atomic bombs King feared just one year earlier. The oppositionality between technology and humanity had been a stark reality for black American society for centuries.
If you want to read Patrick describe the film in more detail please read the article entitled a Time to Break Silence on the University of Nottingham's Black History Month blog series. The Alien Encounters exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary is open until December 31.
Posted on Tuesday 27th October 2015