By
Shana Heiser
Arizona Daily Wildcat
MLK committee presents semester-long film series promoting diversity education
Three cocaine dealers flee to a tiny town in Arkansas in Carl Franklin's "One False Move," an independent film starring Billy Bob Thornton, Cynda Williams and Bill Paxton.
Today's showing of the 1991 film, sponsored by the University of Arizona Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Committee, marks the first of five independent film screenings being shown throughout the semester.
The film is an "action drama, and a violent crime thriller about cops tracking down killers involved in a gruesome drug murder," said media arts assistant professor Beretta Smith-Shomade. "It's very interesting how it takes the stereotypical crime thriller and subverts it by including all these socio-political subplots."
The committee is sponsoring the screenings to help educate the UA campus about diversity in films, said Alex Wright, director of African American Student Affairs.
"Our committee is trying to bring a perspective from many different cultures, such as Native Americans, poor whites, rich whites and Hispanics," Wright said. "We want to make sure that what we're doing is very inclusive."
The committee selected the movies based on their representation of Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy.
"These films traverse the ideas of race, gender, sexuality and identity, in entertaining ways," Smith-Shomade said. "We wanted films that said something important in different ways."
English professor Charles Scruggs will lead a discussion after tomorrow's screening of "One False Move."
"We're hoping to not only have (the viewers) be entertained," Smith-Shomade said, "but to start dialogue about various ways that imaging in cultural production shape our social beings."
The differences between northern and southern ways of thinking are highlighted in "One False Move," something Smith-Shomade said she hopes will prompt viewers to look at their own opinions.
"Enjoy it, think about the underlying implications of what this means, think about how it's reflective of not only our contemporary culture but our historical notion of racial relationships," she said.
Franklin has since directed "Devil in a Blue Dress," starring Denzel Washington and "One True Thing," with Meryl Streep and Renee Zellweger.
Showing next on Feb. 15 is director Darnell Martin's "I Like It Like That," a comedy about a raucous Bronx family weathering the storms of love, lust and urban life.
