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Scribe Video Center Presents Screening of Strong Island and Master Class with Yance Ford

Scribe Video Center presents a free screening of critically acclaimed Strong Island and Master Class with director Yance Ford

On Wednesday, January 17, 2018 at 7:00PM Scribe Video Center proudly presents Strong Island directed by Yance Ford (USA, 2017, 107 min). Shortlisted for an Academy Award nomination, the film is an intensely personal visual memoir. Weaving bare fact and complex emotion, Ford examines not only a man’s death but its aftermath. The film will screen at Lightbox Film Center, 3701 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia with Yance Ford in attendance. The screening is a continuation of Scribe’s Producers’ Forum series, which brings distinguished independent filmmakers to Philadelphia. 

On Thursday, January 18, 2018 at 7:00PM Yance Ford will conduct a Master Cass at Scribe Video Center, 4035 Walnut Street, Philadelphia. A tremendous opportunity for the public to learn from the director himself, this workshop will explore the art of creating a personal/political film in 2018. How does a documentarian maintain a creative and authentic aesthetic in this highly polarized and political climate? How does one use style and pacing to allow audiences to reflect on the story while they are living it? How does one sift through decades’ worth of history, social and familial and tell an intimate story?

About the film Strong Island
“Initially, I thought that the question was going to be, ‘What happened?’, says Ford of the film, “But when I realized the answer to that question is easily arrived at, instead the question became, ‘Why?’. Strong Island chronicles the arc of a family across history, geography and tragedy - from the racial segregation of the Jim Crow South to the promise of New York City; from the presumed safety of middle class suburbs, to the maelstrom of an unexpected, violent death. It is the story of the Ford family and how their lives were shaped by the enduring shadow of race in America. “We have to deal with the way that race influences our criminal justice system,” Yance says. “My brother, William, wasn’t perfect but he was human, and his humanity is the thing that was denied him from the beginning of the process through the end.” A deeply intimate and meditative film, Strong Island asks what one can do when the grief of loss is entwined with historical injustice, and how one grapples with the complicity of silence, which can bind a family in an imitation of life, and a nation with a false sense of justice.

About the director Yance Ford
Yance Ford is a recipient of the Creative Capital Award, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, a Sundance Documentary Film Program Fellowship, and was among Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2011. For ten years Ford was privileged to work as Series Producer for the PBS showcase POV and where his curatorial work helped garner more than 16 Emmy nominations. Strong Island, Ford’s directorial debut has been shortlisted for an Academy Award nomination.

Event Details

Film Screening:
Strong Island
Wednesday, January 17, 2018. 7:00 PM
Lightbox Film Center
3701 Chestnut St. 
Philadelphia, PA 19104
FREE Admission - RSVP here

Master Class with Yance Ford:
Shut Up and Shoot: Moving from Idea to Execution
Thursday, January 18, 2018. 7:00PM
Scribe Video Center
4035 Walnut St.
Philadelphia, PA 19104

RSVP here

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For more information, please contact Najja Zimele-Keita (najja@scribe.org).
Film listings and screening schedules are available at www.scribe.org
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ABOUT SCRIBE VIDEO CENTER
Scribe Video Center, founded in 1982, is a media arts organization that provides training in all aspects of digital video, film, audio, and web-based production. Scribe offers instructional workshops to adults and youth. Scribe also works with community groups to produce media that explores issues of concern.

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