Harvest: 3,000 Years, part of the film series Resistance & Revolution: The Cinema of Haile Gerima
Fri Mar 22 2019
3:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Image from Harvest: 3,000 years, courtesy the director.
Friday, 22 March 2019, 7PM
Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario
Members $9 | Public $10 | Students $8
Dir. Haile Gerima
1976 | 2h 30 min
Harvest: 3,000 Years is Haile Gerima’s first feature set in Africa and a milestone in African cinema. This epic picture of life in contemporary Ethiopia was filmed in Amharic with local cast.
A poor, nameless Ethiopian peasant family slogs away under the watchful eye of a feudal ruler. Sitting there comfortably, he shouts his orders from the veranda, under protest from a local ‘fool’. This man is also trying to convince the peasants of the only way out: get an education. The family seems accustomed to their repetitive and hopeless existence, cherishing memories of happier times and apparently accepting their fate… until something breaks in one of them.
The screening will be introduced by Tessema Mulugeta, President, Bikala Award, who will speak about the film in the context of Gerima’s career. Bikila Award is a non-profit, non-political and non-religious organization created mainly to empower young people to reach their highest potential and to celebrate their achievements. Bikila Award is created to foster academic, professional and business excellence and promote volunteerism among persons of Ethiopian origin and friends of Ethiopia around the world primarily through awards and recognition.
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Haile Gerima is an independent filmmaker and professor of film at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Born and raised in Ethiopia, Gerima emigrated to the United States in 1967. Following in the footsteps of his father, a dramatist and playwright, Gerima studied acting in Chicago before entering the School of Theater, Film and Television at University of California, Los Angeles where his exposure to Latin American films inspired him to mine his own cultural legacy. He has pursued a rich career as an internationally-recognised maker, producer and distributor of films focused especially on African and African-American themes.
This Haile Gerima mini-retrospective is a celebration of a remarkable film-maker, a complement to two of The Power Plant’s Winter 2019 exhibitions, and represents co-presentations of five films with The Power Plant and Art Gallery of Ontario, Hot Docs, and TIFF.
More Films in this Series
For more information on the Resistance & Revolution: The Cinema of Haile Gerima film series, please contact programs[at]thepowerplant.org