12 Years a Slave and Moonlight

Based on an 1853 slave memoir by Solomon Northrop, "12 Years a Slave" is a bracing drama about a Black man who is born free in New York State but is then kidnapped and sold into slavery in the south. In this podcast episode, HCC film professors Marie Westhaver and Mike Giuliano discuss a film that they admire for its historical accuracy in telling a painful story that needs to be told. Director Steve McQueen shot the film on Louisiana locations near the plantation on which Northrup lived. The cast includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lupita Nyong'o, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Brad Pitt, Alfre Woodard and Paul Giamatti. "12 Years a Slave" won Academy Awards including Best Picture. Marie and Mike also talk about writer-director Barry Jenkins' "Moonlight" (2016), which is about what the director has described as "rampant homophobia in the Black community." A creative melding of the urban action genre and the art film, "Moonlight" tells its story in three chapters and correspondingly has three different actors playing the protagonist at different ages. Other characters are played by actors including Mahersala Ali and Naomie Harris. "Moonlight" won the Academy Award for Best Picture.