Ghosts of Amistad
Wednesday, May 6, 2015 – from 6:30pm to 8:30pm
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
515 Malcolm X Blvd
Harlem
Marcus Rediker, author of The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom, screens Ghosts of Amistad. The film, based on Rediker’s book, chronicles a journey to Sierra Leone in 2013 to visit the home villages of the rebels who captured the slave schooner Amistad in 1839, to interview elders about local memory of the incident, and to search for the long-lost ruins of Lomboko, the slave trading factory where their cruel transatlantic voyage began. The filmmakers rely on the knowledge of villagers, fishermen, and truck drivers to recover a lost history from below in the struggle against slavery, and to explore the African origins of the heroes of the Amistad incident.