“Gina’s Journey” On The Big Screen

Regina Mason (right) and filmmaker Sean Durant at the New Haven Museum on Monday.

Tuesday, February 6, 2018 - 

In 1825 in Litchfield, Conn., William Grimes wrote and published the story of his life as a slave and of his subsequent escape to freedom.

Almost two centuries later, his great-great-great-granddaughter Regina Mason picked up where her pioneering ancestor left off, with a book, a documentary and her own story of self-discovery through a rigorous commitment to her family’s past.

On Monday night at the New Haven Museum, Mason and filmmaker Sean Durant presented Gina’s Journey: The Search for William Grimes, a new documentary about Mason’s 15-year pursuit to research, publish and celebrate the life of a family member (and former New Haven resident) who wrote the first autobiographical slave narrative.

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Real Reels Start Rolling

Molly Wheeler (Lucy Gellman photo)

October 16, 2015 - Molly Wheeler first heard of Home Movie Day in 2004 while attending a conference for the Association of Moving Image Archivists. “It just cracked my mind open,” said Wheeler, reflecting on the annual celebration of amateur films and filmmakers in a recent interview on WNHH’s “Deep Focus.” “I thought it was one of the coolest events I had ever heard of.”

Watching other people’s home movies may at first glance seem like a strange candidate for the coolest way to spend an afternoon. But for Wheeler, an archivist at the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library who specializes in audiovisual material, Home Movie Day represented a perfect intersection of three pursuits she cares deeply about: film preservation, social history, and community engagement.

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New Amistad Doc Offers A People’s History

Ghosts of Amistad (2014)

September 24, 2015 - Marcus Rediker sat just barely above water in a canoe weighed down by three historians and a fisherman. The narrow wooden vessel struggled to stay afloat as it ferried its passengers through the shark and hippo-infested mangroves of southeastern Sierra Leone.

Rediker, a celebrated historian of the Amistad revolt, and his two American colleagues were desperately searching for Lomboko: the infamous, makeshift slave depot that was the point of departure for untold masses, including the captives who would eventually take over the Amistad, as they made the harrowing transatlantic trip from freedom in West Africa to slavery in the New World.

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