F.I.L.M. Black Natchez follows Civil Rights turmoil

by Lily Gillespie '12
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR

If you are at all interested in documentary filmmaking, this Sunday’s F.I.L.M. event is for you. The upcoming showing will feature the documentary Black Natchez by Ed Pincus. Pincus has been in film since 1964 and has consistently remained on
the cutting edge of documentary technology. His work is widely renowned and highly acclaimed, earning him several National Endowment for the Arts awards, a Guggenheim fellowship and invitations to serve as the visiting filmmaker at Harvard University and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

The film is Pincus’ account of his trip to Natchez, Mississippi in 1965 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. The black population of Natchez was torn between three approaches to ending black oppression in the South. The first possibility was to work within the white system. The second was to protest and take to the streets. The third was to go underground and form a secret organization whose focus would be stymieing the efforts of the KKK. Although this debate was not unique to Natchez, Pincus was drawn there by his desire to capture the aftermath of a recent carbombing and soon found himself in the middle of this struggle. The result of his experience was Black Natchez, a landmark work in the tradition of fly-on-the wall observational cinema and a crucial document of a moment in American history.

Black Natchez will be screened Sunday at 2 p.m. in the Kirner-Johnson Auditorium.