First Thursday - "The Hate U Give"

Released in 2018, "The Hate U Give" is a gripping, emotional tour de force adapted from Angie Thomas' young adult novel of the same name.

Writing in Variety, critic Jessica Kiang called the film, "a brilliantly modulated balancing act between dark and light, anger and optimism, white privilege mined for pointed laughs and black fury portrayed as a galvanizing force for change. Entertaining, enraging, and ultimately deeply moving, “The Hate U Give” is poised to be a hit, and deserves to be."Working from Audrey Wells’ lively if occasionally on-the-nose adapted screenplay, the great strength of Tillman’s film is a moral clarity as direct and challenging as skyrocketing star Amandla Stenberg’s wounded, courageous gaze. Without compromising the complexity of the issues raised, or condescending to the youth of its protagonists, “The Hate U Give” strides with absorbing, intelligent certainty through the desperately dangerous, uneven terrain of racially divided America."

The film's young star, Amandla Stenberg, won an NAACP Image Award for her portrayal of the teen-aged protagonist, Star. Writing in Rolling Stone, Peter Travers said "It is impossible to over-praise Stenberg's incandescent performance, a gathering storm that grows in ferocity and feeling with each scene."

We are thrilled to welcome these outstanding panelists to discuss this important film:

• Kyle Halle-Erby is Baltimore native and Friends School alumnus. He is currently a doctoral student at the Graduate School of Education & Information Science at the University of California, Los Angeles where he studies language policy and planning in compulsory schools for recently arrived immigrant students. Before entering UCLA, Kyle was a high school teacher in San Francisco. He began studying how language instruction shapes the material conditions of our lives as a Fulbright Fellow in La Guajira, Colombia where he led digital storytelling projects with youth to investigate the impacts of living beside the largest open-pit coal mine in the world. Kyle’s research, teaching, and educational program development have been supported by grant and fellowship funding from New America, The W. Clement & Jessie Stone Foundation, and Fund for Teachers.
• DeNeen Brown is a journalist, an Associate Professor at the UMD Phillip Merrill College of Journalism and was appointed by Governor Larry Hogan last year to serve on the Maryland Lynching Truth & Reconciliation Commission. Deneen has won national feature writing prizes from the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the National Association of Black Journalists, the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors, as well as regional awards from the Maryland, Delaware D.C. Press Association.
• Chris Haley is the Director of Research for the Study of the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland at the Marytland State Archives and the Director of the Utopia Film Festival in Prince George's County. Chris is also an actor, performer, writer and director and co-directed the documentary Unmarked, about the search for unknown burial sites of free and enslaved African Americans. That film is currently airing on pbs.org as part of its Reel South series and can be viewed here.

Attendance at the panel discussion is free, but you must pre-register here.

We look forward to seeing you on October 1 at 7:00pm.

Thank you.