Image Credit: Everett Collection
SANKOFA (1993)
A superficial African American fashion model (Oyafunmike Ogunlano) signs up for a photo shoot in Ghana not realizing that the specific location used to be a castle built for the slave trade. Thanks to an encounter with the titular elderly man, she’s magically transported into the life of a house slave in the antebellum South, and witnesses first-hand what it was like to live through slavery, eventually joining a slave rebellion.
Never heard of it? Not surprising. Despite a warm reception at the Berlin Film Festival, writer-director Haile Gerima could not get a single American distributor interested in his film, so he screened the film himself on a road show across the country.
NEXT: Uncle Tom’s Cabin
