Amistad released in 1997 was produced by Debbie Allen, Colin Wilson and Stephan Spielberg. Spielberg also directed the film which was nominated for 47 awards and won a total of 9. The cast included Anthony Hopkins as president John Adams, who won best supporting actor for his role in Amistad. The film also stared Djimon Hounsou as Cinque, the leader of the Mende, Morgen Freeman as an abolitionist named Theodore Joadson a free man born into slavery, and Mathew McConaughey as Roger Sherman Baldwin. The plot of the movie is based off of a revolt aboard the Spanish ship la Amistad. In 1839 A group of Africans are captured and illegally sold into slavery, after being taken aboard the Amistad Cinque and the other captives over take the ship's crewmen after 6 weeks at sea they are intercepted by Us Navy officers off the coast of Long Island. Imprisoned for the crime of murder, Roger Baldwin and Theodore Joadson challenge the courts in order to prove the Mende are free people not born in plantations of Cuba. After …show more content…
"In February of 1839, Portuguese slave hunters abducted a large group of Africans from Sierra Leone and shipped them to Havana, Cuba, a center for the slave trade. This abduction violated all of the treaties then in existence. Fifty-three Africans were purchased by two Spanish planters and put aboard the Cuban schooner Amistad for shipment to a Caribbean plantation." (Arcives.gov). The film depicts the Portuguese did capture free African people off the coast of Serra Leone and transport them to Cuba where the Mende were then sold to Spanish slave traders. And then to Spanish planters. The film depicts forged documents provided cover for this henna acts. Documents from Havana, June 26th, 1839. confirm the information to be true documents from the SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 40 U.S. 518; 10 L. Ed. 82 JANUARY, 1841 Term the following is
What exactly does Aztlan mean? There are various definitions, such as the ancestral homeland of the Aztec people and their descendants or everyone’s individual Aztlan which is ones’ personal sanctuary. A place one creates in their own image consisting of features that show what kind of person they are, while at the same time still recognizing their ethnic culture. We all have this place though not everyone’s is the same. Your hobbies, interests, the way you dress all make up this special place. Without it, we would be metaphorically lost. For example, in the essay “Refiguring Aztlan”, it says, “Through Aztlan we come to better understand psychological time, regional make up, and evolution. Without any one of these ingredients, we would be contempo-rary displaced nomads, suffering the diaspora in our own land, and at the mercy of other social forces. Aztlan allows us to come full circle with our communal background as well as maintain ourselves as
Through the study of the Peruvian society using articles like “The “Problem of the Indian...” and the Problem of the Land” by Jose Carlos Mariátegui and the Peruvian film La Boca del Lobo directed by Francisco Lombardi, it is learned that the identity of Peru is expressed through the Spanish descendants that live in cities or urban areas of Peru. In his essay, Mariátegui expresses that the creation of modern Peru was due to the tenure system in Peru and its Indigenous population. With the analyzation of La Boca del Lobo we will describe the native identity in Peru due to the Spanish treatment of Indians, power in the tenure system of Peru, the Indian Problem expressed by Mariátegui, and the implementation of Benedict Andersons “Imagined Communities”.
In 1997 a movie called Amistad depicted the true story of a group of Africans that were taken from their families and forced into slavery. Although the movie was heavily criticized for it's inaccurate tale of the terrible ordeal, it gave the story world-renowned attention. The real story had more drama and tearjerker parts then the movie did. If the movie ever gets remade, hopefully this time it follows the facts exactly.
As stated earlier, Mercado writes about the illegitimate practices used by Spaniards to capture and sell Africans. He also documents the details how Africans sold each other into slavery to the Spanish for a profit. In describing how Africans sold each other into slavery, Mercado writes, “Parents selling their children as a last resort, there is the bestial practice of selling them without any necessity to do so, and very often through anger or passion, for some displeasure or disrespect they have shown them” (Mercado). From this, it is seen that not only are the Africans being captured by Europeans but they are also being captured by their own people to be sold to the Europeans. Even worse is the fact that Africans even sold their own children into slavery. In the writings of Azurara, he describes a company of African captives in the following passage. “For some kept their heads low and their faces bathed in tears, looking one upon another; others stood groaning very dolorously, looking up to the height of heaven, fixing their eyes upon it crying out loudly, as if asking help of the Father of Nature; others struck their faces with the palms of their hands, throwing themselves at full length upon the ground; others made their lamenations in the manner of a dirge, after the custom of their country” (Azurara, 1). Upon reflection, I believe that this is comparable to
The Alamo portrays the historical battle between Santa Anna controlling the Mexican Army and the Texan Defenders who are defending The Alamo, a mission located in San Antonio, Texas. The film is heavily concentrated on the year 1836, specifically the months February and March, and the year 1835. The film stars Dennis Quaid as Sam Houston, Billy Bob Thornton as David Crockett, Jason Patric as Jim Bowie, and Patrick Wilson as William Travis. The Alamo is a historically accurate movie that involves history, war, and immense amounts of drama.
In the 1800s, the slave trade is very important to many European countries and America. One of the only countries that does not partake in the slave trade is Great Britain. Great Britain outlaws slavery and many countries like the United States have yet to do so. Many Africans make deals with slave traders. They kidnap people from their own tribes and give them to the slave traders. In return the slave traders give them material goods such as guns. The idea and act of slave trading is what leads to the uprising of 1839 on the ship La Amistad. Many Africans are taken from their homes and forced on ships to sail across the seas to unknown lands. The theme of trading is very important to Amistad, the movie, because it is what begins the whole entire issue of
There is no other experience in history where innocent African Americans encountered such a brutal torment. This infamous ordeal is called the Middle Passage or the “middle leg” of the Triangular Trade, which was the forceful voyage of African Americans from Africa to the New World. The Africans were taken from their homeland, boarded onto the dreadful ships, and scattered into the New World as slaves. 10- 16 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic during the 1500’s to the 1900’s and 10- 15 percent of them died during the voyage. Millions of men, women, and children left behind their personal possessions and loved ones that will never be seen again. Not only were the Africans limited to freedom, but also lost their identity in the process. Kidnapped from their lives that throbbed with numerous possibilities of greatness were now out of sight and thrown into the never-ending pile of waste. The loathsome and inhuman circumstances that the Africans had to face truly describe the great wrongdoing of the Middle Passage.
Blight, D. (2007). A slave no more: Two men who escaped to freedom: Including their own narratives of emancipation (1st ed., Vol. 1, pp. 1-313). Orlando, Florida: Harcourt.
Recently, there is a spike of historical films being released lately. One of the films is an Academy Award nominee for “Best Picture,” Selma. The film, Selma, is based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches. The film shows the struggles of the black community face with the blockage of their voting rights and the racial inequality during the civil rights movement. Selma is about civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. heading to the rural Alabama City, Selma, to secure the voting rights for the African American community by having a march to Montgomery. It shows the struggles from what the African American community had to endured during the 1960s. Selma shows a social significance to today’s current events, specifically
The film that I have chosen to analyze is “The Purge”. “The Purge” is a 2013 American horror film directed by James DeMonaco. It was released on June 7, 2013, to mixed reviews. I will be analyzing “The Purge” by looking at conflict theory, class division, the importance of the ethnicity of each individual character, and the government’s overall political and economic agenda. In brief, I believe that Purge night takes place because of Conflict theory, due to political and economic agendas.
The movie Amistad is about the basic rights of a human and the rights of those Africans who were stolen from their own land and forced onto a Spanish ship named Amistad. The ideals and principles of justice throughout the film are comparable to those of many philosophical writers and the fundamental forms of justice.
Amistad is about a mutiny in 1839 aboard a slave ship, La Amistad, which eventually comes to port in New England. The West Africans who have commandeered the ship are taken into custody and the plot revolves around who "owns" them or if, indeed, they should be freed. This sets up the main event of the film, a courtroom drama about rights and origins, with the required flashbacks to the voyage and the gruesome conditions aboard the ship. The problem with this approach is that we learn less about the real conditions of slavery and instead focus on the more sanitized conditions surrounding the courtroom. In addition, we get a film which is largely about the efforts of the whites battling the case and much less about the struggles of the Africans themselves.
Slaves were abducted from various regions of Africa, and brought over to the New World in large boats, packed to the teeth with the Africans. The slave trade over the Atlantic served as a connection between the West Indies- islands in the Caribbean, and what was to become the United states. In fact there was a large amount of interchange of slaves between these two regions. Therefore, an American reader with an understanding of the Atlantic slave trade in his own history will have some sort of an understanding of how this system worked.
Not much is known about the Cape slaves other than their names, gender and place of origin. Slaves were forcibly removed from their homes, family and friends and were taken to unfamiliar lands. Some even had their names changed by their owners- usually to names from the bible, the months they were captured or their place of origin. Company slaves, however, kept their African names. Slaves were thought of as property of their owners and were transported like animals in the worst conditions. The under deck, where the...
The film Amistad is based on a true event that occurred in 1839. It is about a mutiny by recently captured slaves, who take over a ship known as La Amistad, and the legal battle that followed regarding their freedom. The movie begins by showing many Africans chained together on the lower deck of La Amistad. They manage to break free and go to the upper deck and attack the sailors, leading a mutiny and taking over the ship. They leave two men alive to guide them back to Africa, but they point them towards the US. When they arrive in the states, the Africans are thought to be runaway slaves, and are imprisoned. The case of their freedom is taken to court, to decide whether the Africans were originally slaves or free men. One lawyer decides to fight for them, and pleads his case that the Africans were never slaves and were indeed free men. The case eventually makes it to the Supreme Court and a translator is eventually found to communicate with the leader of the Africans, and he tells his story. He was one of many illegally captured in Africa, and sold into slavery. When the time comes for the trial, John Quincy Adams pleas for their freedom. After a grueling trial, the slaves are said to be free men, and are to be sent back to their homeland, Africa.