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New film follows Mrs #RecyTaylor, who bravely spoke up after a gang rape in 1944 Alabama.
Director Nancy Buirski’s film, THE RAPE OF RECY TAYLOR, is previewing in the UK at Curzon Soho March 22nd. Official release date TBC in May/June 2018.
Content via therapeofrecytaylor.com.
Recy Taylor, a 24-year-old black mother and sharecropper, was gang raped by six white boys in 1944 Alabama. Common in Jim Crow South, few women spoke up in fear for their lives. Not Recy Taylor, who bravely identified her rapists. The NAACP sent its chief rape investigator Rosa Parks, who rallied support and triggered an unprecedented outcry for justice.
Our film exposes a legacy of physical abuse of black women and reveals Rosa Parks’ intimate role in Recy Taylor’s story. An attempted rape against Parks was but one inspiration for her ongoing work to find justice for countless women like Taylor. The 1955 bus boycott was an end result, not a beginning.
More and more women are now speaking up after rape. Our film tells the story of black women who spoke up when danger was greatest; it was their noble efforts to take back their bodies that led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and movements that followed. The 2017 Global March by Women is linked to their courage. From sexual aggression on ‘40s southern streets to today’s college campuses and to the threatened right to choose, it is control of women’s bodies that powered the movement in Recy Taylor’s day and fuels our outrage today.
The release is greatly enhanced by Oprah Winfrey’s recent Golden Globes speech that resonated around the world, wherein she referenced Recy Taylor and her strength to speak the truth. She said her name was “one I know and I think you should know too… speaking your truth is the most powerful tool you have.”
Acclaimed American actress and producer Viola Davis added to this in her recent 2018 Women’s March speech in Los Angeles, referencing the great injustices of the Jim Crow era and contemporary sexual assault statistics, saying, “Nothing and no one can be great unless it costs you something”, also citing Recy Taylor.
THE RAPE OF RECY TAYLOR had its World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival last year, where it won the Human Rights Nights Special Prize and went on to show in the New York Film Festival where is was hailed as “essential” by the New Yorker and a film of “multiple layers and marvellous gumption” by the New York Times.
Eve Gabereau, Managing Director, Modern Films, says: “We launched our female-led company with an event-driven release of the film MANIFESTO, starring Cate Blanchett in 13 different roles, each one personifying artist treatise from the 20th century that have serendipitously become important calls to action in today’s world. To follow up with a film as strong and poignant as RECY TAYLOR powerfully reinforces what we are doing with our slate and remit.”
Nancy Buirski, whose filmography includes BY SIDNEY LUMET (2015) and AFTERNOON OF A FAUN (2013) as writer/director and of the Oscar nominated LOVING (2017) as producer, will present the UK premiere in London in March before its general release date in May 2018.
Learn more at therapeofrecytaylor.com.
With thanks to UN Women and Modern Films.
