40 Acres and a mule/ Da Cotton Pickas

Mission District social worker and film maker Robert "Fleetwood" Bowden's 30 minute documentary film, Da Cotton Pickas, screens at the 12th annual Bernal Heights film festival multiple times this evening, along with two dozen plus other short films by area cinematographers.

Da Cotton Pickas begins Bowden's exploration of the economic oppression roots of the migration of African-Americans to the Bay Region at the outset of WW2. De facto slavery tied poor Blacks and Whites to the land in the South through the share-cropping lien system. This debt culture succeeded slavery after the Civil War on into the 1930s.

Bowden's film digs deep into the origins of the circumstances that launched the Black Lives Matter social movement. If you're intrigued by the expression "40 Acres and a mule," you'll thrill as the relevance it holds for displacement issues today emerges in Da Cotton Pickas.


Festival website: http://www.bhoutdoorcine.org