OTHELLO

Showings

Chauncey -Theater 1 Thu, Apr 6, 2023 7:00 PM
Series Info
Series:Out of the Archive: Black Women Behind the Lens
Reel Representation
Film Info
Rating:Not Rated
Runtime:115 minutes
Director:Elizabeth Shearer White (Liz White)
Year Released:1980
Production Country:USA
Language:English

Description

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Presented as part of the Out of the Archive: Black Women Behind the Lens series.

Followed by a post-screening discussion with Blaine Greteman (UIowa English) and Deborah Whaley (UIowa English/African American Studies).

Liz White’s Othello was the first film version of Shakespeare’s tragedy that starred a Black man and remains the only Shakespearean film directed by a Black woman. The film adapts Shakespeare’s tragedy using an all-Black cast and crew (including music by Hugh Masekela) to reimagine the play in a way that addresses colorism in the Black community, Afrocentrism, and the Black Power Movement. Filmed between 1962 and 1966 at White’s Shearer Summer Theatre at Oak Bluffs, a historic Black community on Martha’s Vineyard, but unseen until 1980 and seldom thereafter, White’s radical reimagining of Shakespeare’s text is essential viewing.

Digitized 16mm print provided by the Black Film Center & Archive at Indiana University.