Ethiopia’s famed award winning film producer, Haile Gerima spoke a Brooklyn’s 156-year old Berean Baptist Church at a preview of his latest film The Maroons which documents the story of
rebellion by African captives in the Caribbean, South America,
Mexico and the U.S., and their escapes from slavery. Gerima, who is a Professor of Filmmaking at Howard University is a fierce defender of African culture. That he “got honest”, as we say in the hood, because his first name at birth was Mypheduh,
which actually means in his language of Geez, “sacred shield of culture”. That name was given to him by his father, who was a director of a theatre group in Ethopis. His mother was a schoolteacher. Talking about “getting it honest”, he is both a film director and
a schoolteacher.
Many of us know him for his very popular film “Sankofa” which was released in 1993 and drew a tremendous following in the African American communities of the United States. No major company would distribute the film, so he created his own film
distribution company Mypheduh Films, and took it to 35 cities, one at a time and grossed over $3 million dollars in the process. He now distributes not only his own films, but quality films by other Black filmmaker that can’t gain access to the establishment’s
distribution.
Gerima came to the states from his town of Gondar, Ethiopia to follow in his father’s footsteps by studying acting and directing at The Goodman Theater in Chicago. He subsequently transferred to UCLA’s Theater Department and received his Masters in
Film Production. He later relocated to Washington, D.C. to teach at Howard University's Department of Radio, Television, and Film “where he has influenced young filmmakers for over twenty-five years. Influenced by UCLA classmate & filmmaker
Charles Burnett, and by the celebrated Black poet and educator
Sterling
Sterling Brown, Gerima's films are noted for their exploration of the issues and history pertinent to members of the African Diaspora from the
continent itself to the Americas and Western Hemisphere. Often corrective of Hollywood versions of slave stories, his films comment on the physical, cultural, and psychological dislocation of Black peoples during and after slavery. What distinguishes his films are
that the narratives are told from the perspectives of Africans and members of the African Diaspora itself, rather than being sanitized and/or misinterpreted by more commercially-oriented filmmakers. Gerima's unique filmmaking aesthetic is coupled with a personal
mission to correct long held misconceptions about Black peoples' varied histories throughout the world; for this reason, he is considered--by colleagues and students alike--to be a master teacher in the classroom and behind the camera.”
Gerima’s talk and screening of The Maroons Film Project held the audience spell-bound, young and old alike. The charismatic pastor, Dr. Arlee Griffin, Jr., who
incidentally loves the color maroon, hails from an area of the South that Maroons rebelled and established their own free territories. Gerima and Griffin both share a passion for generating a spirit in the youth that gives them direction and determination to
learn. Gerima impresses on his students that “what makes humans different from animals is culture”. Gerima’s films almost always deals with our culture and stories about our victories. Adwa, his 1999 film, a true story about a battle in 1896, wherein an African
nation, largely armed with spears and knives, defeats a well-equipped and organized Italian military bent on colonization. He us currently working on Adwa Part II- The Children of Adwa, dealing with the return of Italy to Ethiopia during WWII and the gallant
determination of the Ethiopians to remain free.
The documentary, which features such noted historians as Prof. Asa Hilliard, Herbert Aptheker, Keith Baird and Dianne Baird N’Diaye and comments on rebellion by Angela Davis, is pegged as “a work in progress”, because there will be a sequel that
reveals what has happened in those areas in the US and elsewhere, where Africans fought and won their freedom and established their own towns and cities. Although it is well known that Africans rebelled in Jamaica, Brazil, Mexico and Haiti, and established they
own territories, the establishment never revealed the fact that it happened here in the US, for fear of inspiring other revolutions.
Dr. Griffin heads one of the oldest Churches in Brooklyn. Berean Baptist Church is a historic African –American church located in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. It is currently celebrating 156 years of providing phenomenal ministry. It was
founded as an outgrowth of the Abolitionist Movement by a group of white and Black men who met for religious worship in a general store. It was incorporated August 15, 1850 (13 years before the abolition of slavery in the US), and believed to be the first Black
congregation in Brooklyn to erect an edifice from the foundation. Berean is also a church determined to leave a legacy of building structures that edify and empower a community, and building people that edify and empower each other. Dr. Griffin states, “as we move
into the 21st century, we want people who were disenfranchised and dispossessed to be empowered. We want them to have an increased standard of living, a higher quality of life. We want them to determine their social and political destinies and to be
players in forging the society – not to be victims of the situations they find themselves in.” AMEN
