Firelight Media hosted a Beyond Resilience virtual screening of Documentary Lab alum Christine Turner’s new documentary short film Lynching Postcards: "Token of a Great Day", produced by Firelight Films in association with MTV Documentary Films, followed by a livestream Q&A.

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About the Film

Lynching Postcards: “Token of a Great Day” looks at the history of lynchings in America as commemorated through souvenir postcards. From 1880 to 1968, over 4,000 African Americans were lynched at the hands of white mobs. Staged as public celebrations akin to picnics or carnivals, these lynchings were commemorated through the printing and distribution of photos and postcards that would ultimately be subverted by Black activists to expose racist violence in the U.S. to the nation’s leaders and to the rest of the world.

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About the Livestream Q&A

Following the virtual screening,  introduced by Firelight Founder Stanley Nelson, Firelight Media hosted panel discussion moderated by Maori Karmael Holmes, Artistic Director and CEO of BlackStar Projects; filmmaker and Documentary Lab alum Christine Turner; Dr. Terry Anne Scott, Associate Professor of African American and United States history at Hood College; and Lumumba Akinwole-Bandele, community organizer and educator and former Director of National Strategies and Partnerships at The Movement for Black Lives. The panel centered on the history of lynchings in America as depicted in the film, the anti-lynching movement and its impact on social movements today, and contemporary efforts to pass federal anti-lynching legislation.

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Accessibility notice: This event included live closed captioning.

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The Beyond Resilience series is sponsored by Open Society Foundations. Beyond Resilience is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Program Notes

• Lynching Postcards: "Token of a Great Day" is a production of Firelight Films in association with MTV Documentary Films. Learn more about the film here.
• Stream Lynching Postcards: "Token of a Great Day" via Paramount+.
• See Dr. Terry Anne Scott's book Lynching and Leisure: Race and the Transformation of Mob Violence in Texas
• Learn more about the Emmett Till Antilynching Act.
• Learn more about director Christine Turner by visiting her website.