12 Years a Slave is Steve McQueen's astonishingly brilliant cinematic conjuring of an African American's bestselling, harrowing memoir exactly 160 years after it was published to great fanfare, just eight years before the start of the Civil War. As a literary critic and cultural historian who has spent much of my career searching out African Americans' lost, forgotten, and otherwise unheralded tales—especially the narratives of fugitive slaves--I was proud to have served as a consultant on McQueen's film and excited to see the fruits of his labors. As a cinephile, I also was thrilled to bear witness to perhaps the most vivid and authentic portrayal of American slavery ever captured on screen. That this magnificent artistic achievement was made by a Black British director, bringing an African American's screenplay so vividly and subtly to life, makes this unprecedented achievement all the more impressive, and all the more of a signal event in the history of film and in the history of representations of slavery in the American South. As I sat riveted during Steve's film, I also found myself sitting with 12 Years a Slave's original author and protagonist, Mr. Solomon Northup (1807—unknown), during those first hours, days and nights in April 1841, when, in "the dungeon" of Williams' Slave Pen off Seventh Street in Washington, D.C., he reckoned with the betrayal that had lured him out of a lifetime of freedom in upstate New York into a nightmare of enslavement in the deep and deeper South. "[W]hen consciousness returned I found myself alone, in utter darkness, and in chains," Northup wrote, and "nothing broke the oppressive silence, save the clinking of my chains, whenever I chanced to move. I spoke aloud, but the sound of my own voice startled me." Not only was Northup suddenly a stranger to himself, in an even stranger place, but with his money and the papers proving his status as a free black man stolen and a beating awaiting every insistence on the truth of who he really was—a husband, a father, a free man—Northup was forced into a horrifying new role, that of the paradoxical "Free Slave," under the false name "Platt Hamilton," a supposed "runaway" from Georgia. That all this happened in the shadows of the U.S. Capitol Building—that, in cuffs, Northup was shuffled down the same Pennsylvania Avenue where generations later Dr. King would be heard delivering his "Dream" speech and President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle would parade in hopes of fulfilling it—must have made Northup's imposed odyssey all the more bitter. "My sufferings," he recalled of the first whipping he received from the notorious slave trader James Birch, "I can compare to nothing else than the burning agonies of hell!" STEVE McQUEEN (Directed by, Produced by) is a British artist and filmmaker. In 2008, McQueen's critically acclaimed first feature HUNGER won the Camera d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival among countless other international prizes. He followed with 2011's incendiary film experience, SHAME, a provocative drama about addiction and secrecy in the modern world. The film received numerous accolades and awards with McQueen winning the CinemAvvenire Award and FIPRESCI Prize at the Venice Film Festival as well as nominations from BAFTA, the British Independent Film Awards, the London Film Festival, Evening Standard British Film Awards and the Independent Spirit Awards. In 1996, McQueen was the recipient of an ICA Futures Award, in 1998 he won a DAAD artist's scholarship to Berlin and in 1999 - besides exhibiting at the ICA and at the Kunsthalle in Zürich - he also won the Turner Prize. McQueen has exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Documenta (2002 and 2007) and at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009 where he represented Britain. His work is held in museum collections around the world including Tate, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Centre Pompidou. In 2003, he was appointed Official War Artist for the Iraq war by the Imperial War Museum and subsequently produced the poignant and controversial project Queen and Country, which commemorated the deaths of British soldiers who died in the Iraq War by presenting their portraits as a sheet of stamps. In 2002, he was awarded the OBE and the CBE in 2011. Born in London in 1969, McQueen lives and works in Amsterdam and London. A Blacktree is at all the hottest events on the planet (award shows, movie premieres and press junkets, fashion shows, etc.) and now BLACKTREE ON TV brings stars to YOU on Soul of the South! Watch Full episodes below, and tune in! WEEKDAYS | 5:30 – 6:00pm, 1-1:30am WEEKENDS | 5 – 6:00pm Sat & Sun (CST) _________________________ BlackTree Media Production Subscribe to our channel http://goo.gl/lVN14 Log onto our stream at http://goo.gl/74Ama Follow us on twitter @BlackTreeTV Click here to see more unique video at Comcast Xfinity 'Celebrate BlackTV' click here: http://xfin.tv/1sgUqKk

• published: 19 Sep 2013
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