- published: 04 Jun 2006
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500 Years Later (፭፻ ዓመታት በጓላ 500 ʿamätatə bägwala) is the title of an independent documentary film directed by Owen 'Alik Shahadah, written by M. K. Asante, Jr. released in 2005. It won five international film festival awards (including UNESCO 'Breaking the Chains Award') in the category of Best Documentary. 500 Years Later has received praise as well as controversy, both for the genre of the film (creative documentary), and the social-political impact of the film as it relates to race study. The film opened on February 28, 2005, at the Pan-African Awards (PAFF) and won Best Documentary at its premiere. The film made its American television premiere on August 23, 2008 on TV One (Radio One), and Ethiopian Television premiere on October 27, 2007, and Bounce TV February 08,2012. In 2010, the sequel Motherland was released.
Crime, drugs, HIV/AIDS, poor education, inferiority complex, low expectation, poverty, corruption, poor health, and underdevelopment plagues people of African descent globally. 500 years later from the onset of slavery and subsequent colonialism, Africans are still struggling for basic freedom. Filmed in five continents, and over twenty countries, 500 Years Later engages the retrospective voice, told from the African vantage-point.
Crime, drugs, HIV/AIDS, poor education, inferiority complex, low expectation, poverty, corruption, poor health, and underdevelopment plagues people of African descent globally - Why? 500 years later from the onset of Slavery and subsequent Colonialism, Africans are still struggling for basic freedom-Why? Filmed in five continents, and over twenty countries, 500 Years Later engages the authentic retrospective voice, told from the African vantage-point of those whom history has sought to silence by examining the collective atrocities that uprooted Africans from their culture and homeland. 500 Years Later is a timeless compelling journey, infused with the spirit and music of liberation that chronicles the struggle of a people who have fought and continue to fight for the most essential human right - freedom.
Keywords: african, african-american, african-diaspora, black-independent-film, independent-film, independent-filmmaking, number-in-title, slave-trade, slavery
Maulana Karenga: The other thing they try to do is make us responsible for our own enslavement. And here they collapse three kinds of people: perpetrators, collaborators and victims. You can't do that!"::Maulana Karenga: Not just burning some small, thatched roof houses but destroying towns, cities, villages, great works of art, great literature's and the people that made that art and literature! Songs we would never hear! Histories we would never know! Art we would never see! Because the European had the capacity to destroy and didn't have the moral restraint not to
Dr. Kimani Nehusi: To take somebody away by force; away from their community; is one of the most savage acts you could think about doing. And we can't forget that::Dr. Kimani Nehusi: After the legal termination of physical enslavement, which many of us mistake for emancipation, Europeans continue to want to dominate and control Africa. By then, they had already put in place mental enslavement