IU Cinema celebrates diversity of MLK holiday with film fest

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr., IU Cinema will present its first MLK Day Film Festival from Friday to Saturday at the IU Cinema.

The event marks the first collaboration between the IU Cinema and the Office of Diversity, Equity and Multicultural Affairs, Black Film Center/Archive, Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center and the MLK Campus Committee.

In the past, they have worked with Residential Programs and Services to show movies in the dorm halls during the week of MLK Day.

To begin the MLK Day Film Festival, Madeline Anderson’s documentary film “I Am Somebody” will be shown at 4 p.m. Friday followed by a lecture by the civil rights filmmaker in the Grand Hall in Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center.

Anderson became the first African-American female in the United States to direct a film in a film industry union. She was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1992.

“I Am Somebody” is a documented story of 400 poorly paid black American hospital workers in South Carolina who went on strike in demand of a fair wage increase.

“With the making of her film, Anderson helped pave the way for women of color and women in filmmaking,” said Roberta Radovich, program coordinator of Diversity, Equity and Multicultural Affairs. “We just want to honor her legacy.”

Tim Reid’s 1955 film “Once Upon a Time... When We Were Colored” will be shown at 3 p.m. Saturday.

His film tells the story of an American family who takes the risks to fight racism and achieve political rights in the segregated South during the 1940s.

“Boycott,” a film by Clark Johnson in 2001, will begin after “Once Upon a Time” at 9:30 p.m. Johnson’s film reenacts the events of the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., during the Civil Rights Movement.

The MLK Film Day Festival is free and open to the public, and the free tickets are available at the IU Auditorium Box Office. For more information about tickets, call
812-856-5700.