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…