All Events
Cup of Culture Series
Just Mercy
Film Screening/Online
After graduating from Harvard, Bryan Stevenson heads to Alabama to defend those wrongly condemned or those not afforded proper representation. One of his first cases is that of Walter McMillian, who is sentenced to die in 1987 for the murder of an 18-year-old girl, despite evidence proving his innocence. In the years that follow, Stevenson encounters racism and legal and political maneuverings as he tirelessly fights for McMillian's life. 2h 17m
Cup of Culture
KCSB-FM x MCC collaboration - Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliché Screening
Poly Styrene
MCC Theater
Poly Styrene was the first woman of colour in the UK to front a successful rock band. She introduced the world to a new sound of rebellion, using her unconventional voice to sing about identity, consumerism, postmodernism, and everything she saw unfolding in late 1970s Britain, with a rare prescience. As the frontwoman of X-Ray Spex, the Anglo-Somali punk musician was also a key inspiration for the riot grrrl and Afropunk movements.
But the late punk maverick didn’t just leave behind an immense cultural footprint. She was survived by a daughter, Celeste Bell, who became the unwitting guardian of her mother’s legacy and her mother’s demons. Misogyny, racism, and mental illness plagued Poly’s life, while their lasting trauma scarred Celeste’s childhood and the pair’s relationship.
Featuring unseen archive material and rare diary entries narrated by Oscar-nominee Ruth Negga, this documentary follows Celeste as she examines her mother's unopened artistic archive and traverses three continents to better understand Poly the icon and Poly the mother.
Collaboration with KCSB-FM.
Race Matters Series
Killing the Black Body
Dr. Dorothy Roberts
Online
Published in 1997, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, remains a best-selling book on race, gender, and reproductive freedom more than twenty years later. It documents a long history of regulation of Black women’s bodies in the United States, beginning with the legal status of enslaved women as property, and explains its crucial importance to both reproductive and racial politics in America. Today, these devaluing ideologies, laws, and policies have expanded in new guises that help to perpetuate race and gender injustice in the health care, law enforcement, welfare, and foster care systems. At the same time, the rise of an exciting reproductive justice movement has provided a new framework for envisioning a more humane and equitable society. In an era where reproductive freedom is increasingly under assault, understanding and advocating for reproductive justice is more urgent than ever.
Co-sponsors: Center for Black Studies Research, Dept of Black Studies, Feminist Studies, Asian American Studies, Chicano Studies, Hull Chair of Feminist Studies, AS Black Women’s Health Collaborative
Photo credit: Chris Crisman
Cup of Culture
Kumu Hina
MCC Theater
Kumu Hina is a powerful film about the struggle to maintain Pacific Islander culture and values within the Westernized society of modern day Hawai?i. It is told through the lens of an extraordinary Native Hawaiian who is both a proud and confident m?h? (transgender woman) and an honored and respected kumu (teacher, cultural practitioner, and community leader). A Skype Q&A session with Hinaleimoona, the film’s main character, will follow the screening. (80 min, English, 2014)
Watch the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDaAoYZUlUA
