The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, March 8-14
I Am Somebody (1970)
Directed by Madeline Anderson
Anderson’s important documentary short will screen on a DCP restoration courtesy of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. The filmmaker will appear in person on March 11th to present this great work along with digital versions of two of her other 16mm shorts, 1960’s Integration Report 1 and 1967’s A Tribute to Malcolm X. All three films focus on the struggles of the American civil rights movement and exist to remind their viewers in any moment of how much work is still left to be done.
I Am Somebody was made soon after a 1969 strike by 400 hospital workers (nearly all of them black women) in Charleston, South Carolina. The film uses archival material in clear, straightforward fashion to reconstruct both the work and the courage of the strikers, who were guided by the New York-based union District 1199 and by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. It assumes a poetic approach through a series of brief individual portraits of strikers while also giving space to several speakers addressing them, among whose ranks include Coretta Scott King, come to speak both on her and her late husband’s behalf. Their words succinctly state the ideas behind the strike, such as, “If you are ready and willing to fight for yourself, other folks will be willing to fight for you.” Aaron Cutler (March 11, 6:15pm; March 12, 1pm at the Metrograph as part of their Madeline Anderson program)