In Conversation with Black Filmmakers and PPI Presents: Wilmington 10-USA 10,000 Film Screening & Discussion

Gerima’s first documentary delves into the case of ten men and  women―nine Black and one white, almost all high school students―who were  wrongfully convicted in 1971 in North Carolina for arson of a  white-owned business. In his own words, Gerima’s film, “Explores human  beings rather than facts. It goes beyond the case of the Wilmington 10  and shows people struggling to seek justice." A stirring, kaleidoscopic  work, Wilmington 10 – USA 10,000 remains all too prescient.

Haile Gerima was born and raised in 1946 in Gondar, Ethiopia. He grew up under the influence

of the tales and stories of his mother, a teacher, and his grandmother as well as his father, a

writer, playwright and former resistance fighter against the Italian colonialists.

After a brief period at the Creative Art Center of Haile Selassie University, Gerima emigrated to

the United States in 1967 to attend the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago before

transferring to the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in Los Angeles where he would

study film.

During his studies, he becomes part of a group of Black, Native American, Chicano, Asian and

other international students that questioned and rebelled against the prevailing Western

traditions of filmmaking. At UCLA, Gerima directed the two short films Hour Glass (1971) and

Child of Resistance (1972) – followed by his Master of Fine Arts film, Bush Mama (1976), as

well as Harvest 3,000 Years (1976), which earned him his first international recognition with the

Grand Prize at the Locarno film festival.

In the summer of 1975, Gerima moved to Washington, D.C. to teach film at Howard University.

After the award-winning Ashes & Embers (1982), which did not find a distributor in the United

States, and the documentaries Wilmington 10—U.S.A 10,000 (1979) and After Winter: Sterling

Brown (1985), which is about the legendary Black writer from Washington D.C.

Gerima produced his popular epic, Sankofa (1993), for which he was awarded with the Best

Cinematography Award of the FESPACO Pan-African Film Festival in Burkina Faso. The

internationally acclaimed and cinematographically ambitious tale of a plantation slave revolt

was shunned by U.S. distributors.

Through mobilization of activist communities and relentless cultural groundwork, Gerima

tapped into Black communities and booked sold-out screenings in countless theaters around

the country. After Adwa. An African Victory (1999), Gerima directed Teza (2008), which won the

Jury and Best Screenplay awards at the Venice Film Festival, the Golden Tanit and four other

awards in the categories of music, screenplay, cinematography and acting at Carthage Film

Festival as well as the Golden Stallion of Yennenga at FESPACO.

Together with his wife and filmmaker Shirikiana Aina, Gerima created the distribution company

Mypheduh Films and the production company Negodgwad Productions, both dedicated to

independent Black cinema. In 1996, Gerima founded Sankofa Video, Books & Café in

Washington, DC., a cultural and intellectual space that offers opportunities for collective self-

expression, interaction, discussion and analysis through community events such as film

screenings, book signings, scholar forums and artist showcases. In 2003, the Independence

Film Festival of Washington D.C. awarded Gerima with the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Gerima continues to distribute and promote his own films. He is Professor Emeritus at Howard

University, lectures and conducts workshops in alternative screenwriting and directing both

within the U.S. and internationally. In 2021, he received the Vantage Award of the Academy

Museum of Motion Pictures.