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Thursday, January 1, 2015

EDITORIAL
Great News To Begin The New Year In Film


Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King, in Ava DuVernay's excellent and rousing drama "Selma".  Paramount Pictures
       
by Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com        FOLLOW                                            TWEET
Thursday, January 1, 2015

January is the proverbial graveyard for film.  Studios rid themselves of old inventory -- their dead-weighted or atrocious films -- normally unfit to see the light of day, in this the dead of winter.  Already making a great impression though, are two films, "A Most Violent Year", directed by J.C. Chandor, his third feature, and "Selma", directed by Ava DuVernay, also her third, which have opened to fine reviews.  (The latter partially expanded its platform release today.)

You may be waiting for the champagne or other assorted alcohols to finally dissipate from your system post-New Year's celebration.  Or, you may have seen either of the two fine films mentioned above today.  Regardless, in all of the hangover and hubbub you may have missed an additional bit of positive film news today amidst Hollywood film studio scandals and racist emails du jour.

Here goes.

Paramount Pictures announced today that it would show "Selma" in Selma, Alabama, free of charge upon its release on Friday, January 9.  Selma, Alabama of course, is the site of the three attempted (including one successful) march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to Montgomery traversed by the hundreds and hundreds of people in March of 1965 for voting rights and an attempt to register Black voters. 

The first march, on March 7, 1965 was met by extraordinary state-sanctioned violence by Sheriff Jim Clark and state troopers, resulting in severe injuries.  The date was coined "Bloody Sunday" for that precise reason.  The third march succeeded, and the horrific television images of the first, was a turning point for many white Americans, who joined the movement of Dr. King, Diane Nash, Annie Lee Cooper, James Bevel, John Lewis (now a U.S. congressman) and others.

These individuals and others sacrificed their blood, and later some their lives, to deliver the right to vote to Blacks across the South.  They paid a heavy price.  And today, it was a very nice gesture by Paramount Pictures to respect and acknowledge those many hundreds of people who took severe punishing brutality while behaving non-violently and in the tradition of peace through civil disobedience. 

Paramount Pictures shelved their financial interest in Selma regarding "Selma".  And that is a good thing.  It is a good way to begin 2015. 


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