Look Again. Jan 19 – 29, 2012 Park City, Utah

Sam Pollard performs a remarkable act of historical reclamation in this documentary, recounting the many ways in which American slavery persisted as a practice many decades after its supposed abolition. It is a story impressive in its sweep and alarming in the way that its larger theme—an American moral failure—has been obscured in history.

Facing economic catastrophe under Reconstruction, as well as freed black citizens’ political and social ascendancy, southern states found effective tactics to continue forced servitude in new modes. Techniques such as peonage (forced labor to pay off debts), leasing convicts to private business, or forcing convict labor in state-run enterprises subjected newly freed American citizens to inescapable conditions that insidiously operated under more palatable names than slavery.

Pollard recounts this slowly evolving hidden history, including the activism that powerfully confronted it, with a stirring combination of photographs, reenactments, and the testimony of key historians, bringing to light many shocking details, but more importantly redefining “emancipation” in history and American political life. - S.K.

Catherine Allan
(651) 222-1717
Twin Cities Public Television
172 East 4th Street
Saint Paul, MN 55101
United States
Slavery by Another Name
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Sam Pollard is an accomplished film and video editor and a documentary producer/director whose work spans almost 30 years. He began his career in 1989 with Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads and received an Emmy for an episode he produced. Between 1990 and 2000, Pollard edited a number of Spike Lee's films: Mo' Better Blues, Jungle Fever, Girl 6, Clockers, and Bamboozled. He recently won his sixth Emmy for best editing on the HBO documentary By the People: The Election of Barack Obama.

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