Documentary Channel (DOC) will launch a new initiative in 2011 by showcasing the works of Black documentary filmmakers on the last Tuesday of every month in primetime. DOC is beginning the “Black Documentary Cinema” programming strand in collaboration with the New York-based The Black Documentary Collective (BDC) and the Los Angeles-based Black Association of Documentary Filmmakers-West (BAD West).
DOC’s “Black Documentary Cinema” initiative kicks off with the U.S. television premiere of poet-filmmaker S. Pearl Sharp’s critically acclaimed “The Healing Passage: Voices From the Water” on Tuesday, Feb. 22 at 8 pm ET/PT. Cultural artists in the 90-minute film, along with historians and healers, look at present day behavior that is connected to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. For more than 300 years, Africans were carried from their homeland, across the Atlantic Ocean, into chattel slavery in the Americas and the Caribbean. The documentary explores the residual impact of this African Holocaust that still reverberates in the world today through psychological trauma, genetic memory, personal and community consciousness. The film’s artists use music, dolls, dance, altars, spoken word, visual art and ritual to create paths to healing.
Documentary Channel is primarily available through satellite television services DISH Network (Channel 197) and DIRECTV (Channel 267).
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