Hollywood Goes to Haiti: The Port-au-Prince Premiere of Lydia Bailey
Historian Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall introduces the only film ever made in Hollywood about the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), the first successful slave revolt in the Americas: Lydia Bailey, produced by Twentieth-Century Fox in 1952.
The talk focuses on an extraordinary part of the film's history: its world premiere in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, which was the first Hollywood premiere ever held outside the United States.
Why did Fox hold the premier in Haiti? Why did the Haitian government pay for this gala event? The answers reveal new insights about Haitian history, Black internationalism, and the history of African Americans on Hollywood screens.
Dr. Sepinwall will also speak on
"Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games"
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
5:00 p.m.
Engineering Science Building 1001, UCSB
Contact
Professor Nadège T. Clitandre at nclitandre@global.ucsb.edu or Rosa Pinter at 805-893-3914 or rpinter@cbs.ucsb.edu