In April, when the pandemic first drove most of us homeward in retreat, a number of Arkansas-based groups partnered to create the Shelter-in-Place Virtual Film Series — Arkansas PBS, Washitaw Foothills Youth Media Arts & Literacy Collective, Just Communities of Arkansas, Arkansas Cinema Society and others. In the upcoming weeks, the Arkansas Peace & Justice Memorial Movement, co-convened by Kwami and Clarice Abdul-Bey, is organizing a theme-based series that highlights Black voices. Tonight, the series screens Dawn Porter’s “John Lewis: Good Trouble,” a 2020 documentary about the life of civil rights legend and legislator John Lewis.
Lewis also has some Arkansas connections, as you’ll recall. For one, he is both subject and author of the National Book Award-winning “March” trilogy, illustrated by North Little Rock native Nate Powell.
To watch, you’ll need to set up an account with the video platform Ovee, which you can do at ovee.itvs.org. (It’s free, and it took me all of two minutes to register on Ovee for last week’s screening of “Copwatch,” and the format is intuitive and easy to use, with a chat box alongside the movie frame so you can watch and talk to fellow viewers in real time. Highly recommended.)
Check out the rest of the roster, too. There’s a screening of “Wilmington On Fire,” about an 1898 massacre in North Carolina, July 31; “Harriet,” about the life and activism of Harriet Tubman (and for which Cynthia Erivo was nominated for an Oscar), Aug. 16; and the final installments of “Black Lives,” a 10-part series of documentary shorts produced by the RT Documentary Channel. View the full list of films at apjmm2019.eventbrite.com.