Film Society BuyTickets membership Sponsorship about search  
  Walter Reade Theater
  Film Comment
  New York Film Fetival
  New Director New Films
  Special Events
   
 
Currently On Sale
On Sale: 2008 Archive
On Sale: 2007 Archive
All That Fosse
GS: Clara Bow
Met: Roméo et Juliette
Val Lewton
Spanish Cinema Now
Pilar Miró
La Guerra Filmada
YFF: ...Dollhouse
Accattone in Jazz
GS: Battling Butler
Pasolini
The Iron Horse
Freewheelin’: Music Docs
David Fincher
Whole Shootin' Match
Rolex Art Weekend
NYWIFT: Attica
YFF: Murmur...
Beyond Boundaries
IN: Greensboro
10 Years HK
Leo Awards 07
Chinese Modern
Avant-Garde
De Andrade
For Goodis Sake
YFF: Run Fatboy...
Zeki Demirkubuz
FCS: The Last Winter
Latinbeat 07
Latinbeat 07 Sidebar
Gerard Depardieu
IN: Life on the Mesa
YFF: Bullets over B'way
FCS: Executioner’s Song
FCS: Them
Green Screens: 11th Hour
Polanski
Scanners: NY Video Fest
Woodfall Studios
FCS: Norman Mailer
SFP: Way Down East
SE: After This...
YFF: King of New York
SE: Talk To Me
Kino
Live Earth
FCS: Joshua
Next Gen.: Scorsese
Human Rights Watch
Program Overview
Banished
Carla’s List
City of Photographers
Cocalero
The Devil Came...
Election Day
Enemies of Happiness
Everything’s Cool
Hot House
Lesson of Belarusian
Lumo
Manufactured Landscapes
Mon Colonel
New Visions
Railroad All-Stars
Strange Culture
Suffering & Smiling
The Unforeseen
The Violin
We’ll Never Meet...
White Light
IN: Banished
SE: Evening
New Italian Cinema
YFF: The Story of Qiu Ju
Magnum
Barry Lyndon
4 from Schlesinger
Lee Marvin
Wide Awake
White Nights
Paul Mazursky
Duke Ellington
SE: Il Trittico
YFF: Waitress
SFP: Toons, Tunes...
Carlos Saura
China's Independents
FCS: Electra
FCS: Hot Fuzz
African Film Festival
Daniel Barenboim
ND/NF Classics
Tian Zhuangzhuang
Offside
Rendez-Vous
FCS: P. Verhoeven
IN: A Dream in Doubt
Film Comment Selects
YFF: In the Soup
Donald Cammell
SE: Days of Glory
Farmanara Retro
NY Jewish Film Festival
Whitaker Films
SE: Forest Whitaker
SE: For Goodis Sakepostponed
Dance on Camera 2007
On Sale: 2006 Archive
On Sale: 2005 Archive
Archive 2005 - To April
Archive 2004 - WRT
Archive 2003 - WRT
Archive 2002 - WRT
Archive 2001 - WRT
Archive 2000 - WRT
Archive 1999 - WRT
Archive 1998 - WRT
Archive 1997 - WRT
Archive 1996 - WRT

Scene Photo

Banished
Series: Independents Night [2007] Director: Marco Williams, Country: USA, Release: 2006, Runtime: 86

In the years between the Civil War and the Great Depression, thousands of African-American families throughout the country were violently driven from their land by their white neighbors. These acts of racial cleansing left victims with little choice: get out or die. More than a century later, many of these areas remain all white. Filmmaker Marco Williams (Two Towns of Jasper, 2002), whose work examines the dynamic of race relations in the United States, brings this shameful legacy to light in his documentary Banished by exploring what happens when the descendants of families from three such areas try to make sense of this tragic history.

In Forsyth County, Ga., reporter Elliot Jaspin discovers that most of the property owned by African-Americans was never sold, but was simply taken by white neighbors. Two brothers try to persuade the town of Pierce City, Mo., to relocate their ancestor¹s remains to a more hospitable location. And in Harrison, Ark., the current headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan, a group of white citizens try to find ways to overcome the town¹s racist past. Regret, compassion, morality and emotional tolls combine at all three locations to raise several questions: what can be done to compensate these families and what would truly constitute moral reparation? Williams leaves it to us ­­as a nation ­­to come up with answers that satisfy this overwhelming historical tragedy.

A special Independents Night* presentation with the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival

With special thanks to Milton Tabbot.

*Independents Night is devoted to American documentaries and their makers. Every other month the Film Society of Lincoln Center showcases this rich genre at the Walter Reade Theater. Join the filmmakers for a provocative evening of discovery and stay for the Q&A after the film.



Buy Tickets
Thurs June 21: 6:30