12 Years a Slave

[size=12pt]Slavery is a dark chapter in US history.[/size]

And surprisingly few Americans seem to know the full horror of what the country’s slave population had to endure.

Over the years Hollywood has been reluctant when it comes to filling in the details.

A new film, 12 Years a Slave, stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as a free man who is sold into slavery.

Michael Fassbender plays a cruel plantation owner.

                                 

“There still are a lot of Americans in the marketplace who don’t really want

to see the reality of slavery −

and Hollywood being a business may be wary about showing too much of that,”

The film is based on the published memoir of Solomon Northup :

a free black man from Saratoga Springs in New York who was kidnapped into slavery in 1841.

Northup was stripped of his identity, given a new name and sent to toil on Louisiana’s plantations.

“Slavery is a very controversial topic to discuss within American cinema,”

says Professor Dexter Gabriel, who teaches a class on slavery in cinema at George Mason University.

The 70s TV series Roots was based on Alex Haley’s novel about slavery and was hugely successful.

Its finale had some of the highest audience numbers in US TV history.

                                     

All at sea

Steven Spielberg has tackled the topic in his films.

Amistad told the story of a mutiny on the slave ship, La Amistad in 1839

                         

                 

I was at the hospital all week  and did a lot of reading .I never before heard of this story and what surprised  me was that  this was not made into a movie  already
All the reviews are 4 stars and a movie that I would definitely watch

hope your dad is okay !

Caution : Folks walked out of the TIFF screening here !

[quote author=ketchim link=topic=84257.msg526045#msg526045 date=1382203586]
hope your dad is okay !

Caution : Folks walked out of the TIFF screening here !

[/quote]You might be missing something , they walked out in awe of this movie and it is an  Oscar contender