Episode Details

Feature films “based on true stories” are often criticized for playing fast and loose with the facts, for giving real life people and events the Hollywood treatment and offering us a distorted view of history. Nowhere has this more true than with movies supposedly depicting black history. Can Hollywood accurately record black history the way black people experienced it? Filmmaker Yoruba Richen would argue, “not always.” Which is why some view her documentary “The Green Book: Guide to Freedom” as a necessary corrective to the Academy Award--winning Hollywood film ”The Green Book,” which sought to portray the experience of African Americans traveling the roads of this country in the days when most public accommodations were off-limits to them.

What are the challenges of telling the true history of black people, and what is Richen teaching her film students at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism?

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