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Black American Gothic: Planting Urban Roots in Iowa
| Length: | 29 min |
| Released: | 2013 |
| Ages: |
High School College |
AVAILABLE SOON
Independent filmmaker Carla Wilson documents the exodus of Black people from the inner-city, tracking folks from Chicago as they migrate west to small-town Iowa City, where they struggle to establish roots. Echoing the early 20th-century Great Migration of blacks from southern states to the Northeast and Midwest, this new migration is also about family-friendly housing, jobs, and the search for a better life.
Iowa City is a self-identified peaceful community now facing new challenges: supposedly safe havens from urban life are increasingly attractive to the urban underclass, and as a consequence, these communities are compelled to redefine themselves in terms of race, class, and the urban/rural divide. Moving between narrated experience and social scientific data, local and the national scenes, history and immediacy, the documentary profiles a region in transition, providing public administrators, teachers, and private citizens new narratives for self-understanding and action.
Independent filmmaker Carla Wilson documents the exodus of Black people from the inner-city, tracking folks from Chicago as they migrate west to small-town Iowa City, where they struggle to establish roots. Echoing the early 20th-century Great Migration of blacks from southern states to the Northeast and Midwest, this new migration is also about family-friendly housing, jobs, and the search for a better life.
Iowa City is a self-identified peaceful community now facing new challenges: supposedly safe havens from urban life are increasingly attractive to the urban underclass, and as a consequence, these communities are compelled to redefine themselves in terms of race, class, and the urban/rural divide. Moving between narrated experience and social scientific data, local and the national scenes, history and immediacy, the documentary profiles a region in transition, providing public administrators, teachers, and private citizens new narratives for self-understanding and action.
"Black American Gothic treats this explosive topic with a deep sense of compassion for folks on all sides of the controversy. . . Black American Gothic offers a brilliant depiction of the most urgent racial dilemmas of our time: our schools, our neighborhoods, our families, the places we call home."
‒Aimee Carrillo Rowe, Professor of Communication Studies, California State University, Northridge
"Black American Gothic offers a dynamic and richly personal account of urban gentrification's impacts far outside the city limits. . . inspires vigorous and thoughtful discussion through its frank, smart, and at times humorous depictions of the opportunities and challenges facing black Americans in a small, midwestern town. . . the film's critical cultural analysis of race, gender and class in American culture is deeply pleasurable to watch."
‒Naomi Greyser, Professor of Rhetoric and English, University of Iowa
‒Aimee Carrillo Rowe, Professor of Communication Studies, California State University, Northridge
"Black American Gothic offers a dynamic and richly personal account of urban gentrification's impacts far outside the city limits. . . inspires vigorous and thoughtful discussion through its frank, smart, and at times humorous depictions of the opportunities and challenges facing black Americans in a small, midwestern town. . . the film's critical cultural analysis of race, gender and class in American culture is deeply pleasurable to watch."
‒Naomi Greyser, Professor of Rhetoric and English, University of Iowa
Awardee, We The People Distinction, National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, Iowa
