Race, Film, and Hope: Living into Reconciliation by Dr. Greg Garrett
Tuesday 10 November at 19h30 via Zoom
Dr. Garrett's most recent book is A Long, Long Way: Hollywood's Unfinished Journey from Racism to Reconciliation (Oxford). In this powerful new book, after more than a century of cinema, he argues, movies have altered our cultural perspectives in the same way that religious narratives have. And in fact, religious traditions offer powerful correctives to our cultural narratives. A Long, Long Way incorporates both cinematic and religious truth-telling to the subject of race and reconciliation. In acknowledging the racist history of America's national art form, Garrett offers the possibility of hope for the future. His conversation with us will help us confront the ways film has often negatively portrayed minority groups thus reinforcing a racist narrative in our society and offer ways to lean into the healing and reconciliation God longs for us to know as a church.
In preparation for our evening, we commend the following films for your viewing ahead of time: Gone with the Wind, In the Heat of the Night, Do the Right Thing, 12 Years A Slave, and Get Out. You don't need to have seen these films to enjoy the conversation so even if you don't have access to these films, please do plan to join us for what promises to be a rich evening together.
Dr. Greg Garrett is the author of four acclaimed novels, two books of memoir, and twenty nonfiction works on faith, politics, race, culture, and narrative, and is, according to BBC Radio, one of America's essential voices on religion and culture. An award-winning Professor of English at Baylor University, Greg also serves as Theologian in Residence at the American Cathedral in Paris, and is an elected member of the Texas Institute of Letters. He lives in Austin with his wife Jeanie and their family.
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