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Sankofa Film Analysis

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Sankofa Film Analysis
Sankofa Film Analysis Who is Haile Germia? Haile Germia is an Ethiopian filmmaker, film director, screenwriter who was born March 4, 1946 and raised in Gondar, Ethiopia who now lives in the United States. He immigrated here to the United States in 1968 to pursue acting, and enrolled in the Goodman School of Drama located in Chicago. He is best known for his film Sankofa which raised a lot of awareness to the African American community. He is also known for the Los Angeles school of black filmmakers. He is a very influential professor that teaches at Howard University which is located in Washington, DC, which he has been teaching there since 1975. Colorism can be defined by a practice of discrimination by which those with lighter skin are treated more favorably than those with darker skin. (Race Relations). In the movie Sankofa colorism was displayed throughout the whole movie. When the house slave Joe who is the son of nunu, was light skinned and not as dark as his mother or the other slaves. He was basically treated like he was one of the white men. He had more authority but was still considered a slave. He grew up always being a house slave so in his mind he was “one of them”. Which made him believe that he was different, and wasn’t like the others. So at the end of the day he was always treated differently and better when it came to who he was because of his skin tone. I believe Germia was trying to say that religion is very big in the African American enslavement. I believe the reason why he displayed so much religion is because that’s how slaves worshiped. They believed that things would changes and praised a higher god. Because they didn’t have anything else but each other, they knew their God wouldn’t fail them so psychological God is all they knew. It was who they praised every night in the cave and what gave them strength that knowing something better was going to happen. Physically was through their songs and dances that were displayed throughout


Cited: About.com " Race Realations. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb 2012. .
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