What dramatic movies have been historically accurate?

[el_bryanto]

34. OK

Allow me to link you to another article by Brittney Cooper.

But how will we ever have any of those stories if we can’t trust a black woman to tell this story? We don’t trust black women to be our philosophers and theorists, our political strategists, or our film directors. Directing, like quarterbacking, we are told to believe is the province of white men. This is why the Oscar nomination “Selma” received for best picture feels hollow—the academy clearly does not respect DuVernay’s directorial vision. Save Steve McQueen, black folks, men included, are rarely deemed fitting of recognition in any kind of academy, except music. White women are not respected as directors either. It is precisely that intersection, that double jeopardy, of blackness and womanhood that gives so many black women the exceptional ability to artfully render black life, to see it in all its fullness, to move beyond the perspectival limits of whiteness and maleness. That same intersection often becomes a liability in the quest for institutional recognition of black female genius.

Ava DuVernay surely knows that. So she made the film she wanted to make. One that features Amelia Boynton and Coretta Scott King having a conversation about what it means to be prepared, as we hear Coretta talking about her desire for a more active role in the strategy and organizing side of the movement. One in which Diane Nash reassures the men, on their car ride into Selma, that this is the next big place for movement building. One in which Annie Lee Cooper slaps the policeman who manhandles her.

In this film, we see black women resisting, organizing, strategizing and cajoling. That we want to see even more of this tells us that “Selma” is akin to being gifted a few acres of our own after too many years gleaning cotton in fields that have not belonged to us.

The director of the film, by the way, is Ava DuVernay. Oprah was one of the producers.

Bryant