Word: slaving
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...marker, no mention of any of this on Sullivan's Island--just beach homes and speedboats bobbing in the sun. "The reason people are afraid to talk about slavery is the terrible truth of someplace like this," says Ball. He learned of the pest houses while writing Slaves in the Family (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $30), his chronicle of his slave-owning family and the blacks they held. "Look at this," he sighs. "The story has absolutely been erased...
...confident with this ruse that he neglects to actually personify the evil at hand. With forced and belabored "filmmaking," he painfully portrays the anguished and horrid plight of the Africans so as to equate any and all adversaries they might have, whether they be Spanish slave traders, greedy British sailors or the American legal system--which he only later in the movie realizes is actually defending them. His treatment seems to raise a long, accusatory finger at somebody, but doesn't make clear who, so that while nobody is actually defending slavery during the body of the movie, the audience...
Amistad is based on a true story which took place in 1839--the saga of a failed mutiny on board a Spanish slave ship and the series of trials that followed to determine the fate of the slaves on board. A number of parties, including Queen Isabella II of Spain, the Spaniards on board the ship, representatives from Cuba and a pair of British naval officers made claims to ownership of the ship and its cargo of slaves once it turned up on American shores. Abolitionists, here portrayed by Morgan Freeman and Matthew McConaughey, tried to have the slaves...
Throughout the movie, Spielberg takes special care to favor the Africans in all of their trials and tribulations, without adequately developing all sides of the issue, or even clearly defining what the issue is. He provides an overwrought sequence depicting the Africans' torment at the hands of the slave traders, self-consciously attempting to be "powerful." The characters in the movie, let alone the audience, certainly don't need the guilt Spielberg tries to foist upon someone, anyone, with this sequence, especially since the cruelty of the slave trade is never at issue in any of the trials. As soon...
...ANGELES: Steven Spielberg says the slave drama "Amistad," set to be released Wednesday, might be "the most important (film) of my career." Novelist Barbara Chase-Riboud, who wrote about the same slave-ship rebellion in her 1989 book "Echo of Lions," thinks it's the most important film of hers...